Mirror Shards
by Oreramar
Summary: A collection of Ao no Exorcist one-shots. Characters, ratings, and genres vary; see first chapter Table of Contents for individual details. Newest story: Triangles. (Veranderung-related oneshot) Things were always suspiciously weird between Yamada and Angelina-chan. When they started pulling Rin into it, Shima knew exactly what was going on.
1. Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Each Ao no Exorcist one-shot is individually titled, rated, and summarized here. They are listed in "chapter" order for ease of navigation and will be uploaded as they are written. Unless otherwise specified, assume that each one-shot is independent of all others, though some details may occasionally be re-used between them.

Please be aware that I will write very little romance, and none of it will be slash. Any pairings will be listed in the 'warnings' section of the one-shot summary. If no pairings are shown, there are none in the fic.

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Birth of a Demon

**Genre: **General

**Rating: **K+

**Character(s): **Egin Yuri, Fujimoto Shirou

**Warning(s):** Compliant with known canon up to ch. 26 of manga; will likely become AU as canon progresses. Canonical character death.

**Summary:** As an Exorcist, Egin Yuri surely knew what had impregnated her. Surely she also knew what a threat the child was to mankind. So why did she carry it to term, and how did this involve Fujimoto Shirou?

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Chess

**Genre: **General

**Rating: **K

**Character(s): **Mephisto Pheles (mentioned: Okumura Rin, Yukio and Fujimoto Shiro)

**Warning(s): **None

**Summary: **Mephisto Pheles' favorite game is often compared to the act of manipulating human beings themselves. He knows this comparison isn't all that accurate – at the very least, manipulating people is far more enjoyable, and _far_ more challenging.

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Appearance Matters

**Genre: **Humor

**Rating: **K

**Character(s): **Suguro Ryuji, Shima Renzo, Satan (implied presence: Okumura Rin and the rest of the gang)

**Warning(s): **None

**Summary: **Satan wasn't quite what Ryuji – or anyone else – expected...

* * *

><p><strong>Title: <strong>Devil's Dance

**Genre: **Angst, Horror?, Supernatural

**Rating: **T

**Character(s): **Okumura Rin, Satan, Okumura Yukio

**Warning(s): **Character deaths, Dark AU

**Summary: **Satan tried to pull Rin through the Gate for a reason...and in one universe, he succeeded.

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><p><strong>Title: <strong>Of Death and Demons

**Genre: **General

**Rating: **K-K+

**Character(s): **Okumura Rin, Kuro, (minor) Fujimoto and Yukio, others mentioned

**Warning(s): **Brief discussion of religious views regarding death and the afterlife

**Summary: **Rin has a brush with death, and one thing about it bothers him: just what does death mean for a half-demon son of Satan?

* * *

><p><strong>Title: <strong>Summoning and Gunfire

**Genre: **General

**Rating: **K+

**Character(s): **Okumura Rin, O. Yukio, Shura, others mentioned/brief appearances

**Warning(s): **Character injury/coma

**Summary: **Rin always wanted to be Paladin, but he never actually intended to master more than Knighthood...which was only ever one-third of what he really needed.

* * *

><p><strong>Title: <strong>The Gravestone Visit

**Genre: **General, Family

**Rating: **K+

**Character(s): **Okumura Rin, others mentioned

**Warning(s): **Past character deaths, mentions of Rin/unspecified-female-character and (very briefly) Yukio/unspecified-female-character

**Summary: **There is a cross in a graveyard. Sometimes a young exorcist visits it, cracks it a beer, and just talks for a while, for family is, perhaps, never truly gone.

* * *

><p><strong>Title: <strong>Triangles

**Genre:** Humor

**Rating: **T

**Character(s): **Shima Renzou, others mentioned

**Warning(s): **Based on storiewriter's Veranderung; knowledge of that fic needed.

**Summary: **Things were always suspiciously weird between Yamada and Angelina-chan. When they started pulling Rin into it, Shima knew exactly what was going on.


	2. Birth of a Demon

**Birth of a Demon**

When Fujimoto Shiro was told that a confession awaited him, he had made his way to the church proper grudgingly prepared to hear yet another case of the usual: petty theft, dishonesty, not attending Sunday last – possibly a bit of infidelity, though that was rarely heard – any and all from some anonymous figure set to be in and out in half an hour at most. He gloomily wondered what, out of all the possibilities, would await him this time. Perhaps a rebellious teenage boy dragged in against his will by righteous parents, or a nervous young woman who just wanted reassurance that no, she wasn't doomed to eternal damnation for this little transgression or that. Either way, prospects were grim, Fujimoto thought, until he opened the door and his priestly mask faltered at the sight of the figure sitting on the nearest pew.

"Yuri?"

The brown-haired young woman looked up quickly at the sound of her name. She tried a smile, but the red rim about her eyes and paleness of her face ruined the attempt. Fujimoto took in details of her appearance in an instant – the rumpled state of her usually-neat clothes and hair, the tear stains on her face, the way she had both arms wrapped self-consciously around her middle – and dropped the priestly act entirely. In moments he had crossed the floor and crouched at the side of his first student.

"What's wrong?"

She shook her head. Her voice was broken.

"Can we talk? In private. Please."

Fujimoto's reply was to stand, help Yuri up, and guide her into a smaller room set in the back wall of the congregation hall. It was more a storage closet than a proper meeting room, but it had thick walls, a good light, and spare cushions and chairs for decently comfortable seating. Yuri settled herself gingerly into one of these seats, her eyes fixing anywhere but on Fujimoto's own. He waited a moment to see if she would open up herself before pressing forward.

"Now can you tell me? Is there a way I can help?"

A half-choked sound, maybe a sob and maybe a laugh, forced its way from Yuri's throat. She shook her head and her arms wrapped themselves more firmly about her stomach.

"I…I don't know where to start," she hiccupped. "It's all so…so…"

"Is there a beginning?" Fujimoto prompted gently.

"Yes. I think. I don't know. Do you remember Yugure?"

"Yugure? Yes. I conducted his funeral, only two months ago. He had been killed by possession."

"Three days before our wedding," Yuri mumbled. Fujimoto nodded grimly; he had known that, but it wasn't his place to point it out.

"I am sorry for your loss. I suppose that this…" he made a loose gesture meant to encompass Yuri herself, "has something to do with him?"

Yuri nodded and took a deep, shaky breath.

"I'm pregnant."

Fujimoto blinked, but waited silently and with no further visible reaction. There was more to it than that, and it was for Yuri to let it out now.

"I've taken the tests. Three times. I've got the early symptoms, morning sickness, strange cravings. I'm even starting to show a bit. There's no doubt. And I know it's his, but the circumstances…others wouldn't think…I need your help, shelter…"

"Breathe, Yuri. Stay calm. Speak slowly," Fujimoto said in a low, calm voice. "You're rambling."

"I'm sorry," said the distraught young woman. Her arms clenched briefly around her midsection; at least the gesture made sense to Fujimoto now. "I still don't know how to explain this. I've thought it over for weeks, and I still don't know how."

Another deep breath.

"The child is from Yugure, but…it happened while he was possessed."

This time, the silence was heavy and oppressive. Fujimoto curled his fingers together and fixed his former student with a serious look.

"Yuri, you know as well as I that the chances of the child being…"

"I know, yes, but I don't care! No matter what, no matter who it was, there's still a chance that the genes stayed _his_! That this child is fully human! I won't give it up, please, don't make me…"

With that, Yuri – firm, determined young exorcist Yuri – finally broke down into sobs. And with that, Fujimoto found himself with a puzzle which was missing several pieces, the largest of which seemed to be the identity of the demon itself. After all, other women in the world had found themselves unfortunate enough to be the victim of a demon's assault, and none of them had been pressured by the Exorcists to abort any resulting children. The largest reason was the fact that there was usually a fifty-fifty chance that the child would show no sign of its demonic heritage at all; few demons were strong enough to so completely override a host human's genetics.

"I don't council abortion, don't worry," Fujimoto soothed, still musing on Yuri's seemingly overblown fears. There was something missing…

"E-exorcism," Yuri forced through her sobs. "What about that? If you knew, tell me you wouldn't do _that_…"

"Not even if it was the child of a Demon King," Fujimoto promised solemnly. A broken shriek of a laugh was his immediate reply, slipping between the sobs which were already losing some of their force.

"Not a king – a god," Yuri whispered. Fujimoto heard, and he knew.

"Satan?" The name was almost a hiss. Yuri flinched, hunching protectively over her stomach as though afraid Fujimoto was about to put an exorcising bullet through it right there, right then. "Are you sure?"

"Blue fire. He told me so. He kept…laughing…"

Fujimoto's face tightened. He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over them, unsettling his glasses.

A child of a Demon King was extremely rare, but still acceptable. It would be raised as though human, its powers sealed away into some small object or another until it came of an age to accept the responsibility of them. Most such children became Exorcists themselves, using their demon-born abilities to further the fight against their fathers' kind, just like many other half-demon humans in the world.

A half-blooded child of _Satan_ was an entirely different story.

The self-proclaimed god of Gehenna was in a league all his own, said to have created all of demonkind. No living human knew just what he was or where he came from, though most modern religions had a name and a story for him. The one certainty they had was that if evil had an embodiment, it was he.

Usually, he simply tortured and killed his occasional bout of victims. Never had he targeted a single man just to assault a single woman. Never had he created a child in this world.

A stray thought crossed Fujimoto's mind: if religious extremists found out, they'd surely start screaming 'Anti-Christ' and 'Armageddon.' He pushed the thought away, as now was _not_ the time, and he was not so foolish.

If the child proved to have inherited Satan's own power, it would _have_ to be exorcised. A child of that demon, running loose in the world, was too dangerous to comprehend. Not only could it do great harm to humans – by will or by accident – but who knew what sort of advantage Satan himself could take using it.

"Will you…tell anyone?"

Fujimoto dropped his hand, resettled his glasses, and looked into Yuri's frightened brown eyes. Several long moments passed, silent pleading and grim knowledge flashing between their gazes. At last Fujimoto gave a slow nod.

"I must inform the Vatican – you _know_ I must, Yuri – but I will ask them to allow the birth, and to let the child live…unless it truly proves to be of Satan."

"It isn't," Yuri insisted. Her breathing was still uneven and tears still coursed down her cheeks, but she was no longer sobbing outright. "It's _Yugure's_."

"And if that is indeed the case, then all will be well," Fujimoto said, standing up. "But Yuri, you must realize that if the child is born demonic – worse, if the child is born with _His_ powers – I will have no choice but to act as Paladin. Please, understand that."

Yuri shuddered, but said nothing.

"No need for you to worry further. Come, I'll get you some tea and see about a place for you to stay for a while. This is a men's abbey, but we have been hospitable to those in need before."

A week later, Mephisto Pheles, on behalf of the Vatican, sent Fujimoto out on a well-classified mission in Kyoto. He came back after several days with a beautiful, terrifying katana in hand. He locked it in a cabinet without a word, but words were not needed. He and Yuri both knew exactly for what the sword was intended, and he and Yuri both strove to put it out of mind, going on with their days as though nothing had changed – as though a weapon of infanticide wasn't just out of sight, hidden like a monster in the dark.

Time, and life, went on.

The members of Fujimoto's clergy were aware of the pregnant woman in their midst and of the fact that she, and, after a certain sense, the child, was a demon's victim, but _which_ demon was left untold. As such they were little worried by the looming birth, unless it was worry for Yuri herself – her health was showing signs of deterioration, though it was no sickness that anyone could diagnose.

"_Please, Egin-san, do try to eat a little more, for the child…"_

"_You're up early, Egin-san…are you not sleeping well?"_

"_Egin-san, you're so pale. Do you feel ill?"_

But Yuri continued to push curry around on her plate, slept little, and grew gradually more wan and weak, even as her belly swelled and the little life inside began to kick about energetically. Fujimoto never voiced his concerns, knowing as he did that it wasn't an illness nor even the stress of a first pregnancy.

It was said, and truly, that whatever Satan touched would soon be corrupted.

Therefore it occurred to Fujimoto that Yuri may well weaken and die before the birth could ever take place, taking the child – human or demon – with her. The thought made his insides twist painfully, though he strove to ignore the sensation and the meaning which might lay behind it, a meaning first spoken by a Buddhist monk in Kyoto.

Surely it wasn't a child if it was the spawn of Satan. It wasn't innocent, or good, or worth any guilt or pain, not if it belonged to that dark being…

Fujimoto never thought this truer than when, just a few months after collecting the Koumaken, the very temple he had taken it from went up in blue flames. By the time the exorcists heard of it, it was too late to do anything but drench the remaining fire in holy water, search for survivors, and help bury the dead. Fujimoto himself, as the Paladin, was called out to the site. As he gazed upon distorted, bloody faces and smelled the faint, hot tinge of sulfur in the air he felt a quickening of fear and anger – helpless, hot anger, strong enough his limbs shook and he had to take a smoke break to calm himself.

Yuri was there when he returned to the abbey, a manila folder in hand and worry on her face.

"I heard," she said. "Did anyone…"

"Survive?" Fujimoto supplied blandly. "A fortunate few, and only a fraction of those were unscathed."

"It was definitely him, then?"

"Without a doubt. It was terrible. Practically meaningless. Satan is cruel to his very core; it is his complete nature."

Left unsaid was the thought that nothing good could come from such a monster. _Nothing_.

Yuri's fingers tightened, creasing the paper between them. A flickering smile, part forced but part true, crossed her face.

"I need to show you something," she said. "I went to the hospital today, for a check-up. They took an ultrasound, too."

"Ah. So you know the gender, then?"

A printed sheet was taken from the envelope and handed to Fujimoto. He turned it over, peering at the fuzzy image and trying to make sense of the shapes within – too many shapes, he thought, for one tiny baby…

"Twins," Yuri said with a hint of pride. "Both boys. They're due late in December, perhaps early in January."

Two of them – suddenly the blobs in the image made just a little more sense. Fujimoto's gaze sharpened, searching the grainy picture for any abnormalities, anything strange: too-long ears, pointed nails, the form of a tail…

"One way or another, it's too hard to tell," he murmured at last, returning the picture to Yuri. "Congratulations on the addition."

"Ah. Thank you."

Fujimoto paused, eyeing Yuri's pleased but sunken countenance.

"Go and get something to eat," he suggested. "Two growing boys need their nourishment, you know."

One of the little forms had been half-hidden behind the other, but Fujimoto was able to discern the shape of one tiny ear in the picture…and that ear had been rounded. _Human_.

Perhaps Satan's blood would not reach Assiah after all. Against all practicality, he let himself hope in that.

The cool blaze of fall soon passed into winter, and though Yuri's health never truly improved, she somehow found the strength to weather those months well. The grainy image of her sons seemed to spur her onward; she often was seen with it in hand, tracing the blurred outline of a head, the shadow of a limb, the smooth curve of that one visible ear. Lists of names, most crossed out, piled themselves on the table beside the bed which had been hers for over six months. A curious life had entered her tired eyes, pushing the haunted gleam aside with the thought that these were not of Satan, they were of Yugure after all. Kurikara was so much forgotten metal, locked away in a closet like a childhood nightmare.

Her stomach swelled to the point where Yuri could hardly walk anywhere on her own. Fujimoto sometimes glanced at her and swore that if she grew any further she would surely burst. He felt strangely anxious as time went on – Yuri was his former student, a not-quite-daughter or niece or something of the like, and he had very little experience with situations of this sort anyhow. In addition, though he now could hope for the best, fears bordering on paranoia haunted his mind: what if the demonic genetics touched only one of the twins, or what if the traits developed after the ultrasound was taken?

What if Kurikara was a necessary evil after all?

He confided his fears in Mephisto during a small celebration on Christmas Eve, once he'd drunk enough to loosen both his stress and his tongue, and the violet-haired demon regarded him with a smirk and a shrug.

"What happens, happens," Mephisto replied philosophically, pouring Fujimoto another drink he really didn't need at that point. "But since you're so worried, Yuri could have the children at your abbey instead of the hospital. Keep it small and private. I know of a good, well-qualified midwife in the area who's had experience with these sorts of births before. For goodness' sake, I could even drop in myself for your peace of mind, if you get word to me. Don't be surprised if I come a bit late, though. Birth, from what I hear, is a messy affair, and I do abhor a mess."

Fujimoto retained just enough intelligent mind to call Mephisto a fastidious prick and to remember his advice when morning came. Fujimoto woke up curled around the legs of his chair with a throbbing head, spotted vision, and a card with the midwife's contact information (written in lurid purple ink) tucked into his pocket.

Evidently, Mephisto had not seen fit to haul Fujimoto back to the abbey after the man passed out.

"Merry Christmas to you too," Fujimoto groused to no one as he began his hung-over trek home.

But just two days later, Fujimoto was blessing Mephisto's name rather than cursing it, as Yuri's water broke and the midwife was called in a rush. The headmaster of True Cross Academy also received a call, to which he only replied, "I shall be there shortly. Don't start any post-birth celebrations without me, hmm?"

The midwife arrived first, within half an hour of the call. A dour, middle-aged woman, she snapped at and shooed a few half-panicked clergy well away from Yuri's room, where they had helplessly been listening to her pained gasps and wondering what they should do. Fujimoto she allowed to stay, though grudgingly, and only if he stayed in a chair in the corner without moving.

Mephisto had been right; birth was a terrible mess, and Yuri's shrieks didn't make it any easier to bear. The third time Fujimoto tried to light up he was unceremoniously kicked out by the midwife, told to take his filthy habits elsewhere and scolded thoroughly, if briefly, for even thinking of bringing his cancer-sticks near a pregnant woman. And so he waited out the hours in the hall, teeth clenched around a cigarette and trying not to think about the creature which had ultimately brought about Yuri's pain, or worse, about the sword which could make all of her suffering worthless, if things went ill.

Then, suddenly, a shrill, high wail broke the air. Fujimoto stood, recognizing the cry of a newborn, just as the midwife jerked the door open.

"Put it out," she ordered quickly, "and come in here."

The cigarette was duly ground out and Fujimoto stepped inside, only to stop short at the sight of the baby – the oldest of the twins – presented to him.

"Well, take it quick, man, there's still one more coming!" the midwife urged. Yuri punctuated her words with a drawn-out groan and a gasp. Fujimoto numbly formed his arms into an awkward cradle to accept the tiny bundle of blankets dropped into them just a moment later.

The infant was red-faced and squalling, and his wide-open mouth revealed pink gums with four sharp white tips already poking through the soft tissue. A coarse tuft of black hair graced his scalp, just behind two tiny blue candle-flames which sat like horns at the top of his forehead. His ears were long and pointed, and as Fujimoto shifted him, a small, tuft-ended tail swung free of the blankets. Blue sparks leapt from his fists, pattering across the blanket and dying abruptly there.

"No," Fujimoto breathed, but the evidence could not be denied. His mind flashed quickly to Kurikara – cold, sharp, bright-edged steel – and, before he could stop it, imagined the bloom of bright red and the last sharp cry of a life ended before it had reached a single day in age…

He stiffened, and the baby cried again, in near-perfect tandem with the scream of his mother and just before the first wail of his brother. Another life, newly brought into the world, and all Fujimoto could think or feel was death.

It wasn't fair.

_It just wasn't fair_.

The new baby wasn't screaming like the older one did; it cried, but in a weaker, mewling whimper. Fujimoto watched blankly as the midwife clipped the umbilical cord, cleaned the child quickly, and wrapped him in another soft blanket.

"My…let me see my…"

Yuri could hardly breathe, let alone speak, and she lifted her hands weakly, reaching for her babies. The midwife stepped forward first, laying the bundle beside his mother.

"The younger," she said, in a voice softer and gentler than any Fujimoto had heard her use yet.

Yuri smiled tremulously.

"Yukio. Yugure and I…always liked…that name…"

In Fujimoto's arms, Satan's son had slowly calmed. At the sound of Yuri's weak voice, he opened his eyes – pure royal blue, unlike Yuri's hazel or even Yugure's rare blue-green shade. Logically, Fujimoto knew that many children were born blue-eyed, that the color often changed as they grew, but he had a strong feeling that this boy's eyes would always remain this hue.

_Of course they will,_ whispered a side of his treacherous mind, _as he will not live long enough for the color to shift anyhow._

Kurikara. His orders. _Exorcise the son of Satan_.

"Well?" the midwife suddenly barked. "Are you going to stand there like a Bariyon, or will you let this poor woman see her firstborn?"

Like a man approaching a gallows, Fujimoto trudged forward and showed the tiny bundle to Yuri. He saw her eyes move across the unmistakable blue fire-horns, the ears, the tail-tuft poking out of the blanket, the sparks still skipping from his waving fists, and waited for the realization to hit, for her to turn away…

Yuri smiled.

"Rin," she said, reaching up and running a finger across the baby's forehead. "Rin for phosphorous. Light-bearer."

Though not a _particularly_ religious man, Fujimoto was still an Aria and the head of an abbey. He knew his Christian mythology, and he knew the meanings of many names therein, including…

"Lucifer?" he whispered in shock. "You're naming him after _Satan_?"

Yuri shook her head. The midwife made herself busy with the post-birth procedures.

"Lucifer was the brightest Angel," she whispered back, her voice weaker than before. "Satan is what he became when he was cast out. Perhaps Rin can be what Lucifer couldn't: _light_."

"You knew."

"Yes. I felt the sparks. I knew. Please, _sensei_…don't cast him out. Please save him."

The Vatican. He was Paladin. Kurikara…

"_You wouldn't kill someone. I know it._"

He was making a mistake, he simply knew, but he couldn't stop himself from lowering the demon-child – lowering _Rin_ – to nestle into Yuri's unoccupied side. The new mother smiled softly up at him.

"Thank you, _sensei_."

Fujimoto turned and left the room without another word.

Mephisto waited outside, lounging against the wall in an incongruous splash of white and pink.

"So…how went it?"

The Paladin strode past, still silent. Mephisto cast a knowing glance at the closed bedroom door before following his friend like a curious dog. Fujimoto led him to a cabinet in a nearby hallway, a cabinet which he opened using a key which hung around his neck. Kurikara, beautiful and sheathed in blue, rested inside. Mephisto watched as the human plucked the sword from its hiding place and held it in both hands.

"I take it the children survived childbirth?" Mephisto tried again. Fujimoto fixed him with a quick glare.

"Why did you have me collect this?"

The tips of Mephisto's teeth showed in a narrow grin.

"Why, to exorcise the child should it prove to be Satan's son, of course."

"Don't lie to me."

"Shirou, my dear friend, why should I fib about such a serious matter? You insult me, throwing accusations around like that…"

"I'm not throwing anything – I'm pointing out something I see stuck to you already."

"Oh? Would you mind explaining that? I would hate to walk around with something on my face."

Fujimoto drew Kurikara partially from its blue scabbard, just enough that the sparse hall light glinted off of the blade.

"Kurikara. The famed Koumaken which defeated the Impure King, but which is now an empty sword with no demon bound to it. It's entirely too flashy for the exorcising of an infant, even one such as Rin, especially when there are far more humane methods. A direct injection of high-grade holy water, for instance. On top of that, I had to go and play fetch to get this, as though there was something wrong with all the demon-exorcising weapons here in True Cross Town – in my own abbey. _You_, Mephisto, are planning something. What is it?"

Mephisto's grin had grown steadily through Fujimoto's speech. A small chuckle preceded his reply.

"Astute as ever, my friend. I am actually surprised you hadn't voiced these thoughts earlier. As for what I am planning – well, that is quite simple. The child…Rin, did you say? Rin possesses a rare link between Assiah and Gehenna, and thus has inherited certain strengths from each, as with other half-demon individuals in the world. Unlike those, however, he is the direct kin of Satan; ergo, he has potentially inherited a power which could eventually be the equal of Satan's own! Don't you see, Shirou, with Rin the Exorcists have an opportunity undreamt of. We could take the fight to Satan. _We could defeat him_."

A brief moment of silence followed Mephisto's surprisingly impassioned words.

"Ah. And here I thought it was a shred of decency, making you reluctant to cause your new baby brother's death," Fujimoto remarked dryly, sheathing Kurikara and slinging it over his shoulder. "Silly me."

"Well, there _might_ be a tiny touch of that," Mephisto replied. Privately, Fujimoto wondered if this was truth or just another joke, and knew that he could never be sure. "Speaking of which, do I get to meet this little half-brother of mine anytime soon?"

"What, you think I'm going to let you hang your ugly mug over the kid's face? Keep dreaming. He only just stopped screaming a little while ago; I'd rather not hear him start again."

"How cruel. In that case, I shall just perform the ceremony to bind his powers into Kurikara and be on my way…"

"Let's do that. Come on."

Thankfully, the midwife was away and Yuri asleep when they entered the room; Fujimoto hadn't looked forward to reassuring his former student that the sword – and Mephisto – was not there to kill her eldest son. The white-clad head of the Japanese order trod lightly over to the bedside before Fujimoto could stop him, lifting Rin carefully to better look at the dozing baby's face.

"Aaaah, who's a cute little ankle-biter," Mephisto cooed, as saccharine as the candies and baked goods he so happily consumed. "Who's gonna be a great little Satan-killer?"

"Don't wake him," Fujimoto whispered sharply. "Hurry up, let's take care of this."

"Oh, very well." Mephisto ran a finger lightly over the tiny flickering fire-horns on the baby's brow. "Hm. Yes, this is Satan's power indeed. Strong, too; most infant demon-human hybrids don't have horns this apparent at birth, if at all. It could make things…interesting. Oh well. I shall do my best."

With a snap of his fingers, Mephisto produced a stick of white chalk from nowhere. Not even bothering to put Rin down, the demon stooped over and drew a series of perfect circles on the wood floor, crossing them with lines at precise angles and scribbling looping words in foreign languages around their perimeters. Fujimoto watched the sealing diagram – distinct from a summoning circle only to the knowledgeable – take shape with a critical eye. When everything had been laid out just so, Mephisto stepped back and placed the wriggling bundle that was Rin in the center of the largest circle.

"Sword, please," he said, holding out a hand. Fujimoto stepped forward with Kurikara himself, placing both blade and sheath in its own circle.

But instead of initiating the ceremony, Mephisto bent and added several more squiggly symbols between the two main circles, pausing to unsheathe Kurikara ever so slightly as he did so.

"What are you doing?"

"Making it better, more controllable," Mephisto replied simply. "Most half-demons simply come into their powers after they've grown enough, meaning that they can access a demi-demonic form at will and won't reach a fully demonic stage unless the power-sealing object is broken or compromised somehow. We don't want this, though, so I'm making the blade into a mini-Gehenna gate and the sheath the gateway. Rin will remain human until he draws the sword, at which point he can access his full powers without breaking the blade and being caught there forever. I know what I'm doing; trust me on this."

"But in that case…what happens to the intermediate step? The demi-demon stage?"

"I fear that it is unavoidable. The first time Rin draws Kurikara, the demi-demon stage will become his natural one. It's the only way I can foresee his body containing so much power."

Fujimoto frowned at the circle.

"If it can't be helped, then very well."

Mephisto dusted the chalk from his gloves and, solemn for once, began the ritual. It was almost deceptive in its apparent simplicity. Little was done, and less was said, and nothing was seen save a sudden change in the infant and in the sword, so that the latter glowed with blue fire and the former appeared as a normal human baby. No theatrics, no sonorous incantations, no flashes of light or smoke; in less than a minute it was over. Mephisto snapped Kurikara home into its sheath, slapped a seal over it, and handed it to Fujimoto without further ceremony.

"That was it?"

"Indeed it was. Now, if I might finally get acquainted with the newest member of my most esteemed family…"

Just then, Rin awoke and let out an almighty wail. The sound startled Yukio awake on the bed, and he joined in with a less powerful, but equally intense cry. The absent midwife, a glass of water in hand, burst into the room, faltered at the sight of Mephisto and the sealing circles, then sailed on over to the bed and Yukio.

"Pick him up, one of you!"

Fujimoto dropped Kurikara, ducked past Mephisto and scooped Rin up from the floor. His cries grew quieter, but didn't fully stop.

"Oh, dear," Mephisto murmured, looking in the direction of the bed. The midwife was leaning over Yuri, shaking her shoulder, but even with that the younger woman didn't stir. Yukio was still wailing his tiny lungs out.

Then the midwife checked Yuri's pulse, and Fujimoto knew.

"Poor thing didn't make it…I'm sorry."

"A sad occasion. At least she may be at peace with her former fiancé now," said Mephisto. He took Yukio up, humming thoughtfully.

"Keep an eye on this one, Shirou. These skin imperfections…like little burns from sparks, don't you think?"

Fujimoto swallowed the lump in his throat just enough to speak.

"Temptaint?"

"Perhaps."

The midwife covered Yuri's still face with the sheet.

"I truly apologize – perhaps if I hadn't left…"

"It wasn't your fault, madam," Mephisto assured her. "Given the circumstances, I'd consider it a miracle she could give birth at all. I shall continue to recommend your services to those in need. Thank you, truly."

So smoothly that it was hardly noticeable, the violet-haired demon ushered the woman from the room, leaving him alone with Fujimoto and the now-whimpering babies. Mephisto shut the door softly.

"But now, we have two small children who need a home…"

He eyed Fujimoto with great meaning.

"You expect me to…I can't raise children."

"You've done a rather wonderful job with your new young apprentice…Shura, am I correct?"

"She was well out of infancy when she came to me."

"But you'd make an excellent father-figure, regardless. And I think he rather likes you already."

"Stop joking around."

"Fine, then. Here's a practical reason: we two, and the midwife of course, are the only ones who have so much as an inkling that Satan's son still lives and his powers sealed. I will report to the Vatican that he was exorcised with Kurikara's blade; they will not settle for anything else. But Rin _must_ be raised in secret, by one who knows and can handle him, until his strength overcomes the seal – fifteen to sixteen years, at the very least."

Fujimoto very nearly demanded to know why Mephisto couldn't take him, in that case, but quickly rethought it. The idea of Mephisto raising a child was laughable at best, horrifying at worst.

"So you understand, I hope?"

Fujimoto thought of a spare room next to his own, one which could be converted into a nursery, and sighed.

"All right, you've made your point. I'll take them in."

Mephisto's face broke into a wide, pointed smile.

"Good. Here you are, then! I'm sure you'll be quite busy now, with two children to look after and a funeral to arrange, so I'll just be on my way."

Fujimoto, suddenly holding a baby in each arm, watched Mephisto cross the room and open the door. With one foot over the threshold, the demon paused.

"Oh, I nearly forgot. Their surname…Egin cannot be used. The Vatican will grow very suspicious if two children with that name are being raised in your abbey, and something like that is too easy to find out."

"They can't have mine, you know," Fujimoto pointed out wearily. "I'm not married, and I will not pass them off as illegitimate sons."

"No, no, I was thinking rather...what was the name of Egin-san's fiancé again?"

"Okumura. Okumura Yugure."

"There you have it, then. Okumura Rin and Yukio – I'm sure Egin-san would have approved."

With that, Mephisto vanished. Fujimoto cast one last, pained glance at the still, sheet-covered form on the bed, and he held the twins close.

"Yes. I think she would have."


	3. Chess

**Chess**

Mephisto Pheles – Johann Faust V in public – prided himself on his aptitude for games of strategy, particularly chess. It had been years since his last defeat in his game of choice – well over a century, in fact – but his enjoyment of it was not limited merely to the fact that he was unofficially the best player in Assia. He also found the game extraordinarily comforting. There was simply something about the way the little pieces could be moved to his every whim, the challenge of cornering and defeating an opponent, the myriad possible paths a game could take which appealed to his character. Some days, Mephisto could win in fewer than ten classic moves. On others, he toyed with his hapless opponents longer, drawing out the game with deliberately complex move patterns and elaborately layered traps. The hardest games were usually when he tired of defeating his Academy professors and instead played both sides of the board himself. Usually those came down to him deciding which color would win based on personal preference.

White won quite often, he found, despite his very best attempts to be fair about it.

Of course, even chess had nothing on the challenge of manipulating people. Humans tended to compare manipulators such as himself to chess-masters, and themselves to pawns, but such a simile was grossly oversimplified. Mephisto knew full well the difference between playing humans and playing carved blocks of wood and stone; the former were far less limited in what they could do, where they could go, and when they could act. If humans were pawns, then they were the oddest sort, capable of moving like rooks, knights, bishops, and, on rare occasions, queens, all too often without their chess-master's direct guidance, and occasionally in a manner he had not expected. For humans and their conflicts, there was rarely any such thing as 'taking turns' or making one move at a time. They also played off of each other, and possessed an almost distressingly strong penchant for acting off of emotion alone.

One might think that these tendencies would make the playing of large numbers of humans difficult – impossible, even. How can you expect your left knight and bishop to corner the enemy king together when their movements are self-motivated, illogical, and liable to change drastically with the sudden, unavoidable loss of a nearby pawn or rook? How can you possibly guide your side to victory when each and every piece has its own agenda, its own emotions, and when the least occurrence might send them running in entirely the wrong direction?

The answer to this, Mephisto found, was not to construct a single, elaborate, fool-proof plan, as some humans suggested when they wrote manipulative villains into their plays, novels, and manga. Such an event only worked in the vague realm of imagination, and even then only with a great deal of allowance from the realistic quarter. No, one great manipulation would never work.

The secret was _flexibility_, coupled closely at times by patience.

Mephisto constructed his schemes loosely, and with a great deal of observation and psychology plied against his oft-unwitting subjects. He shifted situations to present, as clearly as possible, a limited number of options which the trapped human might take, and while his plans always had one or two preferred (and more likely) results, they were never so narrowly inflexible as to be shattered when the man or woman did exactly the opposite of what he expected. Occasionally a human may escape his nets, but never permanently. Not even death could completely deny him – once, many years ago in Austria, it had happened that a man Mephisto wished to ensnare had taken a 'wrong' course. This course, in turn, took him to the wrong side of a drunkard's knife, as chance had it, leaving the demon without that particular pawn to do his bidding.

Rather than write it off as a loss, Mephisto had turned to other pieces. The man had left a widow, a young son, and an older brother in this world, and all of them had been incredibly moved by his death. Positively delirious with emotion, in fact.

Manipulating them had proven ridiculously easy, so much so that Mephisto briefly wished he'd thought of getting rid of the man earlier on in that particular scheme. Not that it mattered all that much in the end, of course, particularly when compared to Mephisto's current gambit.

Playing with humans allowed some room for error. When Mephisto pitted himself against a king or a sultan, however great or powerful a man, he never needed worry for his own safety. He stood well above any human being in regards to power; they could do very little indeed to harm him, should one prove astute enough to detect his interference in the first place.

Playing with both humans and demons was another matter entirely. Some of his brothers were as intelligent as he, though he rarely admitted such, and their father was another matter entirely. Should Satan decide that Mephisto's game appeared too dangerous, or worse, the slightest bit suspicious, that would be the end of it all. At best, Mephisto would be called back to Gehenna. At worst, his very existence would be null.

The thought should terrify him.

Instead, he found himself thrilled.

Thrilled, every time one of his new pawns showed him defiance, was taken before Mephisto wished, was interfered with by other pieces in ways which fell beyond the realm of logical prediction. Thrilled, because this was less a chess game and more a dance or concert, a great performance in which nobody knew their parts, and none knew of the sheet music Mephisto had written except in brief snatches and refrains released at particular moments, unconnected and irrelevant to their ears, but intrinsic and influential in their conductor's.

Thrilled...because a life without risk was nothing but the dullest drudgery, and Mephisto's life had been long indeed.

Chess was never so exciting.

This was not to say that Mephisto was careless, however. While dancing with death sounded exotic, dancing against death in such a way that the entity didn't even know you were present was infinitely more challenging, and therefore infinitely more rewarding.

In this way, Satan himself seemed to know nothing more about the matter than the fact that his violet-haired son was pulling human strings once again. The Vatican, while remaining a little leery of the demon, had entrusted him beyond his earliest expectations. Almost every Paladin of the Order had, since Mephisto's joining as an honorary knight, considered him a good coworker at the very least...and a friend at the best.

Then, a very long way into his game, a thoroughly interesting and unexpected development had occurred: the birth of two new baby brothers. Twins. Sons of Satan. _Humans._

Mephisto had seen possibilities immediately. He never changed his actions, though he was quick enough to support the current Paladin in his decision to raise the infants himself; after all, Fujimoto was one of those who considered Mephisto his best friend. The demon, for his part, had kept a certain distance, inquiring politely after the children whenever he met with Fujimoto and listening with a contrived air of feigned interest to stories of short tempers and high intelligence. Then the conversations would turn to other matters of small-talk and the like, and Fujimoto remained unaware of his demonic friend's watchful interest in the children.

Learning, several years along, that the younger twin had been born with the temptaint...now that was a fascinating moment. Mephisto lightly suggested exorcist schooling, if only to educate the boy about the world he saw, and Fujimoto readily agreed, as Mephisto hoped he would. Another set of plans, another branching course, began to coalesce around the twins. They had survived this long, the one with Satan's power remaining thoroughly hidden from both the Vatican's eyes and those of Gehenna, and who was Mephisto to ignore such a shining opportunity?

Then, things changed. The fires awoke, and Satan's attention was captured instantly. Fujimoto fell in the attack, but the boy survived, and Mephisto knew it was time to press his next move.

This time, he went in person.

And against all odds, he was surprised.

Satan's youngest son, and the one and only half-human in his admittedly extensive brood, proved to be a more chaotic piece than any Mephisto had ever experienced. Not even the man in Austria had proven so unpredictable; the undesired course he had taken had still been one Mephisto knew to be possible, despite the pains he took to reduce its likelihood. He knew, based both on general human psychology and from details about the fellow Mephisto had gleaned upon knowing him.

The Okumura twins...Mephisto had been hearing stories about them since they were in diapers. He had them both plotted and mapped so that any hypothetical situation could be subtly tweaked and manipulated to produce the best results. He knew them as well as he knew the details of his favorite chess set. He fully engineered the moment he met the oldest twin for the first time, spoke a script he had prepared for the occasion, and waited for the boy to take his cue. And he did...by speaking the wrong line.

"_Make me one of you_!"

Okumura Rin becoming an exorcist…that hadn't been in Mephisto's plans. He had meant what he said: Rin had two clear choices. Allow his death or fight to live. Backed up as he was by a number of armed and rather intimidating masked exorcists, Mephisto intended this message to be taken as seriously as it had been conveyed. Rin was surrounded, cornered and threatened with certain death no matter his choice. Very few humans would have given up in despair; most would respond with the old classic of fight or flight.

And that was precisely what older demon had expected of the hot-tempered young one. In his mind's eye, Rin would draw the Koumaken, create a little chaos, and then make a break for it, something firmly in line with his previous reactions to human bullies and gangs. He wouldn't kill anyone unless by accident; there wasn't anybody beloved or innocent to protect. Therefore, all of his thoughts should have bent themselves upon escape...and Mephisto hadn't exactly chosen the strongest exorcists possible for the job.

In this situation, Mephisto himself would easily have survived the assault, while contriving to make it appear that Rin had escaped through luck and no fault of Mephisto's own. He then had plans and means aplenty for keeping tabs – and if need be, pressure – on Rin as the boy ducked underground to escape them. He would at that point guide the boy from afar, perhaps even from the viewpoint of an antagonist, pushing him to be stronger and stronger in the wild, independent and fierce, and subtly manipulating his thoughts toward Mephisto's own secret goals. Instead…

He had laughed aloud in that moment, and in the aftermath of that laughter he saw a brand new possibility.

An exorcist...why not?

Still, to think that the half-human son of Satan, the sole inheritor of those blue flames out of all his fully demonic siblings, had made a choice even the chess-master couldn't predict. It was…ridiculous. And, even after all these months, still so very amusing. Mephisto fingered a black marble knight from his favorite set and bit back a snicker.

In the time since Rin's arrival at True Cross Academy, Mephisto all too often found his plans shifting imperceptibly to accommodate some strange stunt or unexpected hop, shuffling his other pawns about or making a quick little gamble with fate. So far, though, even he had to admit that the results of these detours hadn't been too bad; in fact, they had so often opened up other possibilities and new, better routes that he was starting to become somewhat fond of the boy, if only for that one trait.

He was also beginning to get something of a handle on Rin's true persona. When the situation boiled down to the boy and a single obstacle or personal choice, he could perform the strangest actions, but when it was more complex – particularly when there were other people involved – Rin's behavior often paradoxically simplified.

He wanted nothing more than to protect others.

In hindsight, perhaps his earlier scheme of cultivating an independent champion outside of the structure of the Order had always been destined to failure, one way or another. If so, Mephisto could only silently thank Rin for taking that unexpected path in the graveyard, because if nothing else...

It had made this game so much more interesting.


	4. Appearance Matters

**Appearance Matters**

Suguro Ryuji was fourteen when he read an excerpt of _The Divine Comedy:_ _Inferno_. Their Literature teacher that year was relatively new to the job, still ambitious with the thought of expanding young minds, and had not hesitated to comb through the greatest classics of the world for their benefit.

By the time they reached Dante, half the class had ceased to do much more than lightly read – or skim, rather – through their assignments. Shima hardly cracked the book open at all – though that was normal, to be honest. Konekomaru was one of the few who remained diligent, of course, but it was Ryuji who poured over the selected Cantos...in particular the beginning of Canto thirty-four, for this was the one in which the ancient Italian author described his version of Satan.

He had a good imagination, Ryuji supposed, and a significant eye for symbolic detail. But he was wrong. He had to be; Dante's Satan was a hideous monster with three faces and six wings, trapped in ice to his waist.

Dante's Satan wept.

The real Satan, Ryuji knew well, was blue fire and cruel laughter. And he looked _nothing_ like a three-faced, leathery-winged monster.

Ryuji knew, because the King of Gehenna was standing right in front of them.

In some ways, he would've preferred Dante's version.

The problem wasn't that Satan was hideous. If anything, he looked almost too normal, and not just because he was dressed out in a sharp three-piece suit. Remove the twisting columns of blue fire which framed his form, shorten the ears and blunt the teeth, and get rid of the whip-like tail swaying behind his back, and he could pass for a business-man with a particularly nasty grin.

No, the problem was in the sharp angles of his face, his straight dark hair, the intense blue of his eyes. The problem was in his lanky build, his deceptively relaxed stance, the hands tucked casually in his pockets. The problem was when you looked at him, and turned back the metaphorical clock in your mind's eye, and envisioned him as a teenager...

It was Shima, to Ryuji's surprise, who swallowed his disbelief – and no small amount of fear – first.

"Well," the pink-haired boy squeaked out, his hands tightening on his staff. He paused, cleared his throat, and quickly glanced sideways at a rather shell-shocked Rin. "I think we know which parent _you_ take after...except you're short."


	5. Devil's Dance

**Devil's Dance**

Contrary to popular opinion, Hell, or Gehenna, is not an infernally hot landscape of brimstone and lava pits. Some locations could actually become cold enough to let breath mist faintly, and the warmest places overall were more often muggy and uncomfortable than blood-boiling. As for the brimstone and lava…

Rin stopped by a high, thin, arched window and let red-pupiled eyes rove over the landscape outside. It was reddish-grey, flat and barren, nothing more than a rocky crust with nary a feature more interesting than an occasional split or upheaval in the stone. Scars of past conflicts, perhaps; most demons were notorious for their short tempers and violent instincts.

His childhood behaviors made quite a lot of sense, knowing that.

Rin shook his head and moved on. He was being oddly reminiscent…but perhaps that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, he would soon be leaving this place, going…

Home? Was Assiah still home? Or was that Gehenna now?

He couldn't tell. Four years changed a lot, after all, and just what he considered 'home' was the least of these changes.

His physical appearance was, perhaps, the most obvious alteration. He was just a bit taller, nearing the form of an adult at last and leaving the gangly look of a growing teenager behind. His eyes, ears, and teeth were fully demonic, a pair of short horns made of blue fire hovered over his forehead, and a dark furry tail tipped in flames swished under his long, open black coat as he walked. The sword Kurikara had been drained of his essence, and now the empty blade hung at his left side. A demon-slaying blade in the hands and use of a demon; Satan found the idea ironically amusing, and so it was the only thing Rin possessed which, like him, had once belonged to Assiah.

The corridor stretched on before and behind him, long, dark, and silent. A faint red light, like a bloody gloaming, crept in through the narrow windows and cast an uncertain illumination on the bare, black stone walls and floor, but the gloom had no effect on Rin's steps. Confident and easy he walked, floating balls of blue fire surrounding him like so many lanterns, their light piercing through even the deepest dark.

_Funny,_ his mind mused absently as he navigated twisting, identical halls. _Funny, how the fire is so comfortable now, when at first…_

_...Blue light casting harsh shadows. Blood. Screeching laughter. The confusion of a nightmare made impossibly real, a longing to wake up, the terror of the realization that there was no waking from what was not illusion…_

_He had screamed then, struggling in the slow-sucking grip of the gate. He cried for help, and Father Fujimoto's body arched back and cackled in perverse joy._

"_An excellent cry! Today you will be reborn as a demon. Happy Birthday! Welcome to Gehenna!"_

_Then Fujimoto's body gave a great shudder, his right hand twitching convulsively toward his chest, and Satan's laughter was cut short in surprise. He choked, grunted, and with great effort pulled himself back upright._

"_Seems my time's being cut short here," he said with a strained grin. His tone was more serious than it had been since entering Fujimoto's body. Rin ignored him and kept calling out for help – somebody, anybody._

"_No matter," Satan continued, kneeling stiffly by the edge of the gate. "You'll still come through. As for the sword…"_

_Fujimoto's body lurched again, almost falling into the pit, fingers scrabbling for the emblem hanging on his chest. His face twisted, flickering between Satan's terrible expression and something almost as harsh, but more human. Strain showed in his eyes, in the tightening of his jaw and neck muscles, and Rin reached out, screaming not for help but for his _old man_…_

_Satan won control one last time, holding it just long enough to plunge the blue-sheathed sword straight through the gate's pit. It vanished up to the very top of the hilt, and even that was soon covered over by the bubbling, grinning heads that filled the gate's entryway._

"_I'll take care of that later," Satan grunted. The horrible grin twisted Fujimoto's face one last time and he winked a bloody eye at Rin. _

"_See you back home, kid."_

Rin shook himself out of the vague memory with a small grimace.

Then, he'd been a fifteen-year-old boy, raised as a human and ignorant of his true nature. Then, his own fire had been uncontrollable, and he had been plunged through a gate of nightmares by a burning figure more terrifying than any his young mind could ever create. Then, he'd thought demons to be figments of other people's imagination and himself to be a worthless degenerate who would never hold a job, let alone amount to anything in life. Then, his Father had been a middle-aged priest of a human abbey, and his one and only brother a brown-haired and bespectacled doctor-to-be.

Then, he'd known nothing but lies.

Now, he was nineteen. He'd done a lot of growing, physically and mentally, after his Father…his true, blood Father…had pulled his unwilling body and soul into Gehenna. He'd met demons, and while some of them were indeed mindless beasts, the higher orders had a wit and intelligence about them, and many were so eager to serve their youngest prince that it had made him uncomfortable at first.

Still lost in thought, Rin rounded a corner and barely stopped in time to avoid running smack into a pair of imps. Humanoid, but with longer, thinner proportions, a smaller stature, and vibrantly-patterned skin, they were the servants of Satan's own palace. Most managed to stay out of higher demons' way; these two had, despite Rin's blue glow, somehow missed seeing him until he was right there.

"Young master! Forgive us," squeaked the yellow one, somehow jerking into a hasty bow and drawing off to one side as he did so. The blue-skinned imp, a female, was a little slower to follow, too busy gawking in awe at her young prince.

Rin swept by with hardly a second glance. Living here for four years had taught him that sometimes it was better to ignore the tinier demons; imps could be surprisingly, even disturbingly, sycophantic if they felt they'd been given an unusual amount of positive attention by their masters. Within the first month of Rin's stay, he'd somehow managed to get half of the palace staff under his feet and eager to follow his vaguest whim to its fullest potential.

His Father had been forced to fire – more literally than one might expect – that half of the staff when things went too far. He then tasked Rin himself with finding replacements without incurring any more to hero-worship, as that would only cause Satan to kill another batch. The job had taken Rin months, and had also forced him to develop a strange, cold, imperial mask which he'd hated wearing (it was so unnatural), but which had been the only way to talk imps into taking the job without making them too enamored with him.

Sometimes, in the pitch darkness of Gehenna's starless nights, Rin wondered if this mask was the real goal Satan had in giving him that assignment. Sometimes he worried that the mask might become a little too real, a little too ingrained in his mind and soul.

Sometimes he wondered if perhaps it would have been better to simply continue his early stubborn defiance of Satan until the god of demons tired of him, rather than learn to comply with his demands and further his plans...even though Rin, to be honest, had a plan of his own as well. Besides, he reminded himself whenever he found his mind wandering down this track, he knew full well that Satan, having found Rin to be promising in potential at least, would only continue to create half-human children after killing his first, recalcitrant half-blooded son. By rebelling, Rin would be dead, and others would suffer in his stead.

Even now, even after all he'd been through, he couldn't allow that.

Another interruption pulled Rin from his thoughts, though this came from a form a little more similar to his own.

"Are you leaving now, brother?"

Amaimon stood blankly in a corner of the hall, a small red sucker in one hand and the chain of his pet goblin in the other.

"Yeah, I am."

"Oh." Amaimon shuffled into place beside Rin, uncaring of the blue flames which licked harmlessly at his entire right side. He kept pace easily with his younger brother. "I was hoping not."

"Why?"

Amaimon turned dull green eyes on Rin.

"I'm bored."

"…Ah. I see."

"Do you suppose Father might let me come? I've not seen the human world in so long…"

Rin shrugged. In truth, he knew very little of Satan's overall plans save for his own small part in the beginning, and thus the reason why he was so vital to them. There had been no mention of Amaimon coming along as far as Rin recalled, but that didn't mean anything, really.

"Yes, I suppose he'll tell me if so," Amaimon mused, speaking as though Rin had replied verbally. "Do you have any idea what part of that world you'll be going to, then?"

"Probably wherever that Vatican group is. Near…Reemu, I think."

"Oh, near Rome," the Earth King said knowingly, crunching down on his sucker. "Never been there, but I hear it's actually rather nice. I think I'd like to see it."

"You'd have to ask _him_ about sightseeing, not me."

"True."

Amaimon drew the well-gnawed sucker stick from his mouth and eyed it mournfully. With a soft sigh he tossed it aside.

"Are you _sure_ you can't play with me now, little brother?"

Rin shook his head.

"No time. Sorry."

Once, he wouldn't have been sorry to have an excuse. Four years of his company, however, had taught Rin that Amaimon, with his childish demeanor and frightening, exhilarating notion of playtime, sort of grew on you…especially if you were also someone who found fighting to be a little fun.

"When you come back?"

"…We'll see. Sure, I guess."

_Sure, _if_ I come back_, Rin thought secretly. It certainly wasn't in his plans, but then, anything was possible.

Amaimon's perpetually-dead eyes actually flickered with life for a moment, a flicker Rin usually didn't see until they were well into an increasingly-violent sparring session. It almost made him feel bad for planning to leave, but he smothered the feeling quickly; it seemed that his lessons in hiding his emotions were good for more things than Satan had perhaps intended.

"Promise?"

"…Yeah. Promise."

Rin hardly had time to prepare himself before being swept into a crushing hug. As with almost any close or playful gesture from Amaimon, the embrace was nearly violent – a tight, heavy squeeze which stopped just short of bone-breaking, and which involved sharp nails piercing Rin's shoulder and back. Instinctively, Rin gripped Amaimon's arm just as tightly, but the pain which must have resulted hardly seemed to register.

"You're the best little brother ever!"

Just as abruptly as it had begun, the hug ended, and Amaimon went skipping down the hall, dragging Behemoth behind him.

"See you when you get back!"

Rin rubbed the ache out of his shoulder, feeling his unnaturally quick healing abilities kicking in to seal over the tiny puncture marks left behind. Little hurts were easily fixed; any pain to come from abandoning his most playful of brothers would not take long to heal either. Rin let himself be sure of that, and quickly walked on through the twisting halls.

He reached the doors to Satan's throne room without further interruption or incident. They were immense, unmarked slabs of black stone which towered far above Rin's head. The slight gaps around the frame glowed faintly blue; his father was within. Waiting.

Rin hardly had to touch one of the doors for it to move on its hinges; despite their height and thickness, the doors were well-balanced, intended more for show and intimidation than defense. After all, as the oldest and most powerful demon in Gehenna, what did Satan have to defend against?

Immediately upon entering, Rin's gaze was drawn to the furthest wall, just behind the ornate black throne which sat on a high dais. Illuminated by blue flames greater and brighter than Rin's own was a bubbling, indistinct mass which stretched from floor to high, vaulted ceiling. With some effort, he tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing motions of the Gate and inspected instead the bright mirrors which lined the walls on his either side. Normally they showed a myriad of images from places anywhere on Earth or in Gehenna. Now, only one thing could be seen, stretched larger than life across the throne room's glass walls as though it was an extension of the dark room itself.

It was the inside of a building, something like a grand foyer, designed with marble columns and stained glass windows and mosaic-patterned floors, set all about with closed doors and winding staircases to tiers of balconied walkways. A faint yellowish light from somewhere high above gleamed on the marble and glass, but the colored windows themselves were dull and flat. Either they were for show alone, or it was night wherever this room was.

"The central hub of the Vatican headquarters," said a smooth voice from somewhere near Rin's left shoulder. He didn't so much as twitch; his father was fond of trying to surprise him this way, and he had learned not to betray that surprise whenever possible.

"Normally, this place is protected from my eyes. It just so happens that yesterday there was a little..._accident_...with their wardstones, and they've not quite managed to fix it yet."

A dark-robed form glided around Rin, entering his line of sight at last, and stood calmly before the mirrored wall on Rin's right. Only the writhing tongues fire surrounding him gave suggestion to the mad glee deep in the demon's mind.

"It is time," Satan said, and a spark of excitement entered his voice. "Soon...so soon, I can taste them...all those souls..."

He swung around abruptly, speared Rin with a sharp blue glance – they shared eyes, demon father and half-blooded son, except that those of the former were cruel and crazed to their depths, while the latter's were even and guarded.

"Are you prepared to do your part?" Satan barked.

"Course I am," Rin replied, and there must have been a little tightness in his voice because Satan's response was a harsh laugh and a narrow hand clapped suddenly on his shoulder in an empty show of paternal support.

"Don't be so tense, Sparky, it'll be all right. I've got a safeguard in place; not like you're headed to some kind of oblivion or anything. Sure, it might hurt a little – the first possession always pinches – but you'll get used to it quick enough!"

Rin forced a smile which was all teeth and no feeling, but Satan didn't notice; he had turned away and was headed for his throne.

"Call in the troops. We're moving now."

* * *

><p>They didn't lead the small army of demons into Assiah, though Rin had previously expected they would.<p>

"Wait for the moment, Sparky," Satan said, leaning against the arm of his throne and watching chaos unfold in his mirrored walls. Lesser demons swarmed around the dais, often saluting or bowing as they passed, but never stopping. "Timing is everything."

Coal Tars had gone first, thousands of them, coalescing around every stray speck of dust in the room. Though ineffective in small numbers and virtually harmless on their own, they were guided by higher intelligences and so worked together to cover the room in a wriggly layer of sooty darkness. The first exorcists had entered sleepy-eyed and unprepared for the magnitude of the invasion their interior wards had detected; swarms of Coal Tars blocked up their mouths and noses, stopped up their lungs, and within minutes there were fresh bodies for greater demons to inhabit. The presence of these demons drew more exorcists like moths to flame; these, too, died quickly, and the situation soon entered a vicious spiral in Gehenna's favor.

Every now and again, an exorcist entered with blazing gun, flashing sword, a mouth already chanting verses and sutras and summoning, and a handful of demons were returned to Gehenna.

Mere setbacks, these; the exorcist was overwhelmed, and Gehenna's army continued to swarm through the Gate, possessing everything and anything it could find.

Then, suddenly, Satan stood. His robes rustled as he swept around the throne, and a path to the Gate was cleared immediately. Rin, caught by surprise, hurried after him.

"Now," he said, deep and serious for the moment. "This is the instant. Go quickly."

Rin took a deep breath, steeled himself, and strode without hesitation through the thick, half-solid blackness of the Gate.

* * *

><p>Satan wanted Assiah. In truth, he wanted more still, but Assiah was the first necessary step...yet Assiah was too weak for his presence. He could enter it for minutes at most, depending on the strength of the body he stole. Most fell apart in mere seconds. He needed a body which could contain his power, a body attuned to it.<p>

A fluke, a mere whim, an idle experiment gave him what he needed: Rin.

Rin was human and demon both, of Assiah and Gehenna. Unlike humans, he could exist in Gehenna with no ill effects. Unlike demons, he could exist in Assiah without requiring the possession of another body.

_The perfect form_, Satan said when a mood of gleeful cheer overtook him and he felt prone to dispensing compliments – straight, back-handed, and self-reflective alike – as though they were candy. _My greatest creation. Only wish I'd thought of it sooner!_

Unfortunately, Rin had also inherited an iron will. Satan couldn't take him so easily; he had to be willing.

Or, as it were, deeply, profoundly distracted, disturbed, or afraid.

For when Rin stepped out of the Gate and into Assiah for the first time in four years, he found chaos...but not the chaos he was expecting.

Demons were everywhere, as were exorcists. The bodies of the recently slain stood and fought those of the still living; blood slicked the floor and scented the air, and a cacophony of gunshots, screams, roars, shouts, chitters, chants and more assaulted Rin's pointed ears. But there were no marble columns, no stained glass windows, no mosaic patterns on the floor. This wasn't the hub of the Vatican headquarters, and it was not night. This was a wide, wood-paneled room filled with the light of dawn, streaming in through clear, half-shattered windows and a massive gap in the ceiling. The voices crying out were not doing so in English, or Italian, or Latin, or whatever people spoke in Rome, but in Japanese. The bodies possessed by higher demons did not all belong to strangers – some did, but there was Jiborou-san wrestling a gun away from a black-coated woman, his spare hand wrapped around her throat and his face caught in a hellish snarl. Not far from him was Kidomaru, laughing in a strange, high voice as he sliced the throat of another exorcist, stopping the Aria's hurried recitation in a choking rush of air and blood.

And there, directly before Rin's eyes, standing untouched as though he was the calm in the midst of a storm, was Yukio.

He, too, wore a long black trenchcoat, the quartered emblem of the exorcists dangling from a pin at the chest. He was taller than Rin remembered, though his glasses were just the same, and the pattern of moles on his face was unmistakable. As Rin watched, stupefied and caught in a strange frame of mind where every second was a minute, he discharged the empty clips out of twin handguns, slammed new ammunition into place, and swung his sights toward the Gate – toward Rin.

They froze, staring at each other in mutual disbelief and wonder. Yukio's pistol jerked and wavered. Rin's hands hung useless at his sides, leagues away from the hilt of his sword. The younger brother's lips parted.

"Nii—"

The air exploded in blue. Rin doubled over, screaming as fire – _not his fire_ – crawled through his veins, rushing and tightening and clawing its way through his mind, his heart, his eyes. He hardly felt the first bullet graze his shoulder or the second pierce his leg; all was flame and fear and a shrieking voice crying _well done_ and _here's that safeguard I mentioned – enjoy!_

And then, all was black. Silent. Still. After the agony, the sheer lack of sensation seemed a sensation all its own – numb and tingling and anticipatory. Slowly, he remembered himself. The black lightened to orange-grey. He grunted, found his vocal chords, then his head, then his arms. He pushed himself upright, but everything felt a little off, a little wrong.

His skin pinched, like clothes cut to a different shape or size.

Slowly, carefully, he raised his head and looked around.

Everything was blurry, but he could barely make out his own hands propping his body up. Near them lay a pair of pistols, and not far from those, a splintered mass of wood which might once have been a pew.

"This is where I brought you home," Satan said behind him, all good cheer and reminiscence. Blue light washed over him, flickering like the flames which cast it. "Good luck, that; it created a very convenient anchor point for our big Gate. The whole invasion thing wouldn't have worked half so well otherwise."

Except for his voice, the immediate area was quiet, though Rin could hear sirens in the distance, screams, roars. The battle had moved on while he was out of it. He blinked harder, trying to clear his vision, but it remained blurry and indistinct. Rin raised a clumsy hand to wipe his eyes clear – a hand that felt bigger than he remembered, more square.

It pinched and tingled at every joint, every motion.

"Oh, here – you'll need these now."

Satan's dark form swooped around him, scooping something off the ground and jamming it onto his face. All at once Rin's vision cleared, and he looked up to see—

Himself.

Rin's face, his hair, his eyes and build and _his entire body_ crouched in front of him, tail waving lazily, teeth grinning easily, gaze cruel and crazed and predatory. His clothing, his sword, his everything, but not his flames. Not his soul.

His breath hitched in his throat. Glasses. He had needed glasses, and his skin pinched, and he was all the wrong size. He glanced down at his attire and almost threw up, for there, pinned to the front of his black trench coat, was the cross-quartered insignia of the exorcists.

"What did you do?" he whispered shakily. His voice cracked halfway through, and Satan giggled through Rin's mouth.

"What, you don't like it? It's a reward for your fine service. Or perhaps a birthday gift, if you will."

"Yukio. My brother. Yukio..."

"Surely he wouldn't mind. Brothers share everything with each other, don't they? Especially twins...or am I mistaken?"

Rin couldn't breathe. His lungs – _Yukio's _lungs – pinched and heaved and his heart twisted and ached and every gasping exhale was his little brother's name and every sharp inhale was a plea, a denial, a sob killed before it could be born...

"Take your time, Sparky; there's plenty of fun to be had."

Satan, wearing Rin's skin, patted him hard on the back and stood up to walk away, out into the city already besieged by his forces.

"After all, we've all of Assiah waiting for us!"

He was halfway down the street when he heard the first desperate scream rising from the ruined church behind him – a pure song of devastation, loss, betrayal and pain.

Satan tilted his head back and offered up a counter-melody of wild laughter, and together the opposing sounds – deepest sorrow and highest glee – filled the dawn air of what would soon prove to be Assiah's darkest day.


	6. Of Death and Demons

**Special Disclaimer: **This particular Shard contains some discussion of Christian beliefs, though whether these beliefs are correct or incorrect or what have you is left rather open-ended. I am well aware that there are more disparate interpretations and practices of Christianity than one can shake a stick at, and as such those few individual beliefs alluded to in the narrative and by the characters are not meant to be taken as absolutes of either the overall faith or of my own thoughts on the matter.

In short: this is still fanfiction, and therefore _fiction_ overall. I tried to make sure that everything faith-ical is open to interpretation. Please don't blow a gasket if you notice I'm not presenting the stuff you think is most correct, or if you feel I've simplified the mechanics of a belief system through the dialogue and POV of a child or teenaged character.

* * *

><p>It was a Sunday afternoon, crisp with autumn and a faultless blue sky, and Rin was six years old when he nearly broke his neck.<p>

The quality of the day forbade any young boy to sit, stifled, indoors, and so the moment that morning's sermon had finished and the congregation cleared the church Fujimoto found himself beset by two pairs of pleading eyes, two sets of tugging little hands, two high voices clamoring for the park.

Rin knew their father couldn't resist, even if he wanted to. Their morning had been devoted to talk of death, of Heaven and Hell and sin and justice, and all three felt a keen desire to spend some time in life, on Earth, full of sunlight and laughter and the contentment of a father and his sons in play.

Rin, in particular, near-desperately wanted to fly. It was no surprise to any of them that he cut an immediate beeline to the swings, crying out demands to be pushed – "_higher!"_ – until he managed to keep his own momentum going and Fujimoto could turn his attention to Yukio and his quiet construction of a tower of pebbles at the edge of the grass.

Not five minutes later, Rin, tiring of the swing and beginning to feel a slight tinge of nausea, did something he had seen bigger kids do, something reckless and, judging by their laughter, hysterically fun.

At the apex of the swing, the highest he had ever gone, Rin whooped, uncurled his fingers from the chains, shifted his weight forward on the seat...

And abruptly realized just how far away the ground really was.

He tried to lean back again, to reclaim the security of the wooden swing and his solid grip – too late.

His cheer morphed into a yell of terror, the world tilted around him, and the swing dropped away as the asphalt plummeted towards the top of his head...

A concussion, the doctor called it when he woke bleary-eyed in a sterile white hospital room. A damn-near miracle, he heard the man confide quietly to a worried Fujimoto, that it wasn't something worse.

That he wasn't dead.

_For the wages of sin is death_ echoed a corner of his fuzzy mind, chanting a memory, a verse, a dark snatch of sermon from...was it really only that morning?

_Death, death, _rang the words. _The wages of sin..._

_Demon-child. Monster. Wrong. Bad._

_Sin._

_Death._

His head throbbed and his throat burned, and he sobbed, wishing he had the strength to turn over into the hospital pillow, to muffle his tears.

He didn't want to die.

He especially didn't want to die with words of condemnation, of sin, of hell echoing in his mind.

His minders tried to soothe him, assumed it was the pain of his skull and not fear for his life and soul, and he didn't correct them. Not until the hospital released him and he went home – still on the mend, but well out of danger – did he confide in anyone.

Naturally it was his brother who noticed his mood, and his brother who drew the truth from Rin as they lay awake one night.

"You're not a monster, Rin," Yukio admonished after the initial flood of fears had abated. "You don't look a _bit _like a demon."

Rin twisted the corner of the sheets in his fingers and brushed it against his chin, resisting the urge of an old baby-habit to put the fabric in his mouth and suck on it.

"Yukio? What d'you think..."

He faltered, took a deep breath, and drove onward before his nerve gave out completely.

"What d'you think'd happen if I...if I _did_..."

"You didn't," Yukio immediately countered, "so it doesn't matter, does it?"

Silence pressed the darkness around them like a blanket, stifling.

"No. I guess it doesn't," Rin finally agreed, curling himself deeper into his bed. He was just falling asleep when Yukio's whisper reached him from the other side of the room.

"If you did...well...there's heaven. They'd keep you safe there. Because you're good, Rin. I know you are."

* * *

><p>It was a Sunday morning, muggy with summer heat trapped beneath a lightly overcast sky, and Rin was eighteen years old when a self-righteous assassin's bullet tore through his left shoulder.<p>

They were being awarded, he and his brother and their friends, for their acts of service in what had become a full-scale war against Gehenna and Satan. Rin in particular received special commendations for what the Vatican glossed over with the term "heroic actions in the face of mortal peril" and what those dear to him tended to call, with varying measures of exasperation and wide differences in wording, "a defective self-preservation instinct" or "no working brain to speak of."

Still, his closest friends stood proudly beside him as he tried to bring his alarmingly wide grin under control, not one of them caring about the curling, twitching tail or the sharp canines or the pointed ears. They knew him, and they knew that Okumura Rin was far more than a son of Satan.

Very little of the audience truly understood that.

Some refused to even try.

It was chance that saved him. Chance and nerves, for as Rin shakily mounted the steps to receive a shiny medal and several handshakes and the public words of praise and acceptance he had always longed for, one of his feet caught on the stone. He stumbled.

A gun cracked.

The bullet was that of an exorcist, treated with potent holy water. It went through Rin's shoulder like a white-hot brand, and even as he fell writhing down the steps he had only moments before mounted, even as the pain drove conscious thought from his mind, Rin knew instinctively that had the bullet struck only inches closer to his heart, the shock of it alone could have killed him.

Again, he woke in a hospital room – blue-grey and white and smelling distinctly of chemicals and antiseptic – but this time he was alone, and his head felt clear. His left shoulder throbbed and itched under tight bandages, his unnaturally fast healing hindered somewhat by the nature of the weapon used to wound him, and a warm, comforting weight rested beside his opposite hip. Rin stretched his fingers down and found soft fur and lithe muscles. The lump stirred at his touch; Kuro's wide-eyed face popped suddenly into view.

"_Rin? You're awake!"_

"Just my luck" Rin half-joked. The response fell from his mouth without thought; it had become habit amongst his friends halfway through the war, a morbid piece of humor grown from too many close calls, too many uncertain missions and sudden ambushes and risky battle plans.

This wasn't the first time in recent memory that Rin found himself waking up in some manner of hospital or other, bandaged and aching somewhere. Even with the bulk of the war over, chances were it wouldn't be the last, either.

As it was, Rin felt surprised that he had only Kuro for company this time. Not that it would last long. Eventually someone would poke their head in, find him awake, and he would be treated to a brief flood of friends and family as they all assured themselves – some more casually than others – that he would be all right after all.

Another hard-learned habit they all shared when it came to battle wounds and infirmaries.

Their group had been lucky – unbelievably lucky – but they had all seen more than enough death not to take any of it for granted.

_Death..._

Rin idly stroked Kuro's warm, silky fur for several long minutes, lost in old memories as his mind skipped across weeks, months, years, a decade and back again at a time.

"Where do we go?" he murmured, mostly to himself, forgetting for the briefest of instants – even now, even after all these years – that Kuro could indeed understand him and even answer back.

"_Who? Go where?"_

"Humans like me. Or just humans in general, even. When we die."

Kuro crawled atop his chest, the better to show Rin his most bewildered expression.

"_How should I know? I'm not human."_

"No, I suppose you're not," Rin replied with a tiny, teasing grin.

"_And I thought you had books about it? Shiro had a book. I remember it."_

"Yeah. But there's a lot of books, you see, and some of them say different things. I was kinda hoping you'd have a better idea than me, since you're a demon and all."

"_Hmm."_ Kuro lay down flush across him, resting his chin on the blanket. He closed his great green eyes, looking so contemplative that his next words seemed to Rin wholly out of the blue. _"Rub my left ear, please?"_

A bit bemused by the change in conversation, Rin did as Kuro requested, and for a time the only sound to be heard were the deep, satisfied purrs of a nekomata in bliss.

"_When _we _leave Assiah," _Kuro suddenly said, "_we go back to where we came from - Gehenna. Maybe you're the same. Wherever you come from before you get here, you go back afterwards."_

"I don't know where that is," Rin mused. "Nobody does."

"_But you said there were books."_

"Yeah..."

"_Rin? What did Shiro's book say?"_

The memory echoed, softened by years and questioned by experience, and Rin found no terror in it.

"It says...there are good people, and bad people. It gets more complicated and choosy than that, but...the good people, they go to heaven. It's...I don't know where. Up in the clouds or something. Basically, it's perfect. And the bad ones, they go to Hell, which is supposed to be where demons are from. _The wages of sin, _it says."

"_Gehenna?"_ Kuro asked, tilting his head in what might have been curiosity, or else was an attempt to put his right ear in range of Rin's fingers.

"Maybe."

"_Never seen humans in Gehenna. But then, it's a big place."_

"Hell, Gehenna...whatever it is, it's supposed to be evil, and painful. A punishment for humans who did the wrong things in life, and for demons...well, for existing I guess."

"_Gehenna's not that bad," _Kuro protested. "_Maybe a little dangerous and sometimes even a bit boring, but not that bad."_

"Yeah? Well that's good, I guess. Maybe it won't be so bad if I end up there after all."

"_Why would you come to Gehenna? You said that Shiro's book says it's for bad people, and you're the best!"_

"Eh, well, 'Shiro's book' also says that heaven doesn't like demons, and that's sort of what I am. It might count against me...if that's really what comes after, anyhow. Can't really know, can I?"

"_Guess not. But if you ever do go to Gehenna, I'll go with you," _Kuro offered, as easily as one might offer to take a walk with a friend. "_I'll show you around, all the safest and best places. Buddies forever, right, Rin?"_

"Yeah. Yeah, if that's how it happens, I'd like that. Thanks, Kuro."

Rin rubs his entire hand across the top of Kuro's head, scratching especially between the nekomata's horns and eyes, and he can feel the purrs vibrate through the thin fabric covering his chest, through his skin and muscle and ribcage, and for a moment he fancies he can feel it right down to the core of his heart.

The door opens a crack. Shiemi pokes her head in, and her face lights up like the sun when she sees Rin awake. She's not alone, either; within moments Rin is the center of a storm of reassurances and jokes and laughter and friends and life...and what do the mysteries of death and demons matter in the face of that?


	7. Summoning and Gunfire

**Summoning and Gunfire**

For Rin, learning to Summon was an accident with all the hallmarks of a proper recipe for disaster. He'd never managed it in the beginner class, under the watchful eye of an experienced exorcist, nor did he ever think to pursue it on his own time with the instruction of someone who knew what was what. Summoning was what Shiemi and Izumo did, and they were both brilliant at it. Rin could bash things in with Kurikara's scabbard and hilt and, if the fight went badly enough, he could slice a threat in two with the flaming blade of his heart instead.

He'd never needed to be a Summoner.

Then again, a fight had never yet gone _quite_ this badly before.

The first thing to go wrong was the initial attack itself; they had been taken by surprise, a group of esquires alone and cut off from their teachers and exorcist superiors and not really expecting anything to leap out at them from behind a dustbin, a tree, the patch of shadow left by a burnt-out streetlight. It was, perhaps, thanks only to Rin's superior senses that nobody was slain in the first strike against them; there was just enough time between his uneasy declaration of a wrong feeling and the sudden eruption of chaos to sharpen their focus and, in some cases, begin to reach toward weapons.

It helped, but it hadn't been enough. Not really.

There were too many demons – dark, glossy-shelled creatures like the cross between a lobster and a beetle, blown up to the size of medium-large dogs and faster than a greased nekomata avoiding a bath. Worse, they were working together, and before the little group of esquires knew it, they had been separated into smaller groups, herded and harried apart from one another until they were out of eyesight and backed into corners, ensconced in their own fights yet worried for the lives of their unseen friends.

Rin hadn't waited long to pull his sword. There was no Konekomaru to strategize for him, no Bon to growl and grouse and scold him for jumping in too early; only Izumo and her twin kitsune spirits lashing out against the dozens of thrashing, clicking sets of claws and mandibles with spells and rites and the blessed alcohol the foxes seemed so fond of.

They seemed to be doing rather well at first. For a while Rin actually thought this might be easy, that they were mere moments from breaking through the swarming barricade of lesser demons and rushing off to rescue the others...

And then Izumo shrieked, short, sharp, and surprised. He whipped around just in time to see her collapse to the ground, slips of summoning paper scattering from her hands and pocket. The harvest gods dispersed in patches of pale, misty smoke, and the demon which struck the knockout blow loomed above her fallen form.

As per usual, Rin didn't stop to think. He hurled his sword at the threat, impaling it and setting it alight with blue fire at once. It staggered back, squealing at decibels generally not heard by human ears, and Rin pummeled his way to Izumo's side with Karikura's solid sheath.

And then the sheath was caught in a hooked claw and jerked from his grip, and his sword was still in a dissolving demon body which had flailed its way further yet from his reach, and Rin stood over an unconscious Izumo with nothing but his bare hands and a dangerous, burning power he could not yet fully control or trust.

His foot rustled something on the ground. He risked a glance, saw the slips of paper, and was hit by an inspiration which, were a wiser individual present and privy to his thoughts, would have been dubbed even more foolish than just letting his flames loose in the cramped confines of the alleyway corner and trusting them not to harm his friend or destroy anything _too _important.

There was no wiser person present, however, and so Rin felt no inhibitions whatsoever in reaching down and scooping up an alternative to the power said wiser persons constantly reminded him not to throw about so foolhardily.

The realization and decision took less than a second. It was mere moments work more to swipe his fingers across a thin graze on his cheek, smear the blood on the paper, and look up to see the armored demon-bugs bearing down on himself and his friend.

Though Summoning students were encouraged to find the words of their summons themselves – even to make them up on the spot or in experimentation – they were told never to do so in a panic, and especially never to do so in an uncontrolled situation, alone. In these kinds of situations, they were taught to stick to the summons they knew, those that were tried and true and which they surely could control.

Rin had never summoned so much as a coal tar before.

Between his lack of preparation and the sheer sudden panic of the situation, it was no wonder he screamed the first words which came to mind, heedless of what they might or might not draw out.

"_GET YOUR SORRY TAIL OUT HERE AND HELP US NOW!"_

Dark blue-grey smoke – no, not smoke, _clouds_ – erupted between Rin and the demon horde and, with a rumbling sound like hundreds of massive taiko drums beat in discord, searing white forks of lightning struck out against the walls and ground. Rin's hair stood on end and the tuft on his tail bushed out like a cat's, and he dropped to the ground with a yelp as a crackling arc of electricity passed over his back.

"WHO DARES SUMMON ME WITH SUCH IMPUDENCE?" boomed a deep baritone voice, rolling and echoing between the close, high walls of the alleyway. Lightning continued to dance in wild arcs around a hulking dark form, and Rin could smell something strong and sharp which one of his teammates might have identified as ozone for him. Though Rin didn't realize it immediately, the lesser demons had all backed away and were milling about in chaos, caught between their determination to kill the young exorcist trainees and their justified terror of the deadly power crouched between them and their goal.

"Uh, yeah, that'd be me," Rin said, standing up and dusting his knees off and wondering if this was such a brilliant idea after all. "Hi."

The clouds seethed, roiling up into the air like a time-lapsed video Rin had seen once in a science class, and the lightning arcs grew more numerous and erratic, though none jumped out at him again.

"WHAT?" the voice boomed again as its owner shifted. It was turning around, Rin realized; he had been looking at its back the whole time. "A YOUNG THING? A CHILD, A WHELP, NOTHING BUT A—"

The demon then got its first good look at Rin, and abruptly froze. The clouds stopped churning, the sparks stopped flashing, and the demon stopped talking. Rin, for his part, was feeling pretty awed. While looking at its back, he'd gotten something of the impression of a mountain or a lump of rock, hulking and dark and a little hard to make out past all the bright flashes of light. Looking at it head on and without all those distracting arcs of brilliance dancing about, it hit Rin how very much _not_ like a lump of rock this summoned demon was.

It was an eagle.

A massive eagle, twice as tall as Rin himself, all shiny dark blue-grey feathers and glowing white eyes and gleaming sharp talons and harshly hooked beaks...and, yep, two heads.

"Wow!" Rin exclaimed at last, grinning open mouthed and unconsciously lashing his tail in excitement. "You are so _cool!_"

The eagle seemed even further taken aback for a moment, but then it composed itself, and the lightning sparks began to flash across its feathers again.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, young prince, especially after the terms of your summoning." Both of its heads spoke as one so that the two voices melded seamlessly into a single strand of sound, still thundering even though the demon wasn't bellowing for once. "I am powerful, of a high echelon. Do you truly believe you can master _me_?"

"Do I have to? I mean, can't we just call this a favor or something?"

"If you want to live," the eagle said, bending closer and ruffling its wings up, "and if you want my aid...then yes."

Rin closed his mouth and narrowed his eyes, glaring with all his will straight into the eagle's doubled gaze. His tail stilled, and the fire on his forehead burned brighter than before.

"All right. Fine. I'm Okumura Rin, I'm half-demon, I'm gonna be the greatest Exorcist ever, and if you don't help me and my friends out of this spot I swear I'll kick your tail feathers _myself_."

Overall, after the hordes were demolished and everyone accounted for and injuries patched up and Ganda dismissed, an exhausted yet very self-satisfied Rin declared his first foray into summoning a roaring success and that perhaps it was more interesting a discipline than he'd initially thought it to be.

Yukio, newly arrived on the scene with other Exorcists determined to save everyone they could from the battle only to find it already over, declared him a roaring idiot and that he wouldn't be summoning _anything _without supervision for quite some time to come.

* * *

><p>As it turned out, Rin and his friends weren't the only ones to be attacked by a sudden swarm of unusually coordinated minor demons. Little simultaneous strikes had sprung up all over Japan – indeed, all over the world – mostly concentrated in Exorcist hotspots. Academies, regional headquarters, even locations of historical import to the True Cross organization came under fire at the same instant, throwing command centers into temporary panic and uproar. Though the attacks were eventually beaten back on all fronts, there had been casualties – quite severe in some areas. The Esquires of Japan's True Cross Academy hadn't been the only group of trainees to fall under fire, after all; they had merely been one of the most fortunate despite their lack of rescue.<p>

From then on, hardly a day went by without news of multiple incidents or unusually strong or relentless attacks somewhere in the world. Initially their cram school classes were cut back as teachers were almost constantly on call; more than once they barely got five minutes into a lesson before the professor's cell phone jangled off an alarm and he or she rushed out, sometimes tossing a reading assignment over a shoulder on the way, sometimes saying nothing but an abrupt "class dismissed."

Rin slowly became accustomed to his brother's cell phone going off and the light suddenly switching on in the middle of the night; it was on these occasions that Rin thought the situation must truly be dire, since the Exorcists were technically calling on a high school student on a school night.

Yukio never let him come along, no matter how he badgered and begged.

After a couple of weeks, they entered a cram school classroom to find not one teacher waiting for them, but all of them, including the Headmaster himself.

"The Order has called for an accelerated training program," Mephisto told them, sounding entirely too chipper about the whole fiasco. "It is an emergency protocol put into effect across all academies and training facilities founded by or allied with True Cross. Professors will work on a rotating schedule to ensure your competence in all the basics, followed by an apprentice system where you work with the teacher of a particular discipline directly in the field. You will be expected to keep up in the intensified classes as well as study and practice extensively on your own. Classes deemed superfluous to survival, such as histories and philosophies, have been cut for the time being, and your regular schooling has been put on hold under a variety of official excuses, to be resumed once the crisis is averted. We expect you to make your first true rank as an Exorcist in a single discipline within three months, so work hard! _Later!_"

The demon disappeared in a puff of purple smoke, leaving students and teachers to stare at each other across the room. All at once a number of phones erupted in alarms and most of the ranked Exorcists present dove for them in a cacophony of groans, sighs, and annoyed tuts, squeezing out the doors behind the Esquires and taking off down the richly decorated hall beyond.

Those few remaining exchanged glances and nods, and thus began one of the most hellishly rigorous gym lessons of Rin's life. He all but dragged himself back to his dorm, tufted tail scraping the ground behind him, propped himself up against the sink long enough to brush his teeth, and collapsed into bed. Dimly he registered Yukio's bunk as still being empty despite the late hour, and assumed that yet another emergency had cropped up, or the first one was running long – it wouldn't be the first time Yukio returned long after Rin started snoring. He would just have to complain to his brother about this new accelerated program and its effects on muscles he usually didn't worry about in the morning.

When Rin woke up, it was to a knock on the dorm room door. Yukio's bed was still empty and as crisply made as it had been the previous night.

An Exorcist Rin only vaguely recognized as a teacher in the Academy stood outside. Rin took one look at the man's face and knew he wouldn't like whatever was about to come out of his mouth.

"Okumura Rin? I'm sorry, but your brother has been severely injured in the line of duty."

Rin's mouth went dry.

"He has been hospitalized, and is in a coma."

His throat closed up.

"The doctors are uncertain when...or if...he will wake up."

And for a moment, just a moment, Rin could swear his heart stopped. Beating. Completely.

* * *

><p>Rin skipped the morning session of cram school and didn't care. He even forgot the aches and pains inflicted by the previous afternoon's session – at least, he forgot them as much as he was able, limping a little awkwardly as he was down the sterile black-and-white tiled hallways of the special Exorcists' ward of the True Cross Hospital.<p>

It didn't take him too long to find Yukio, and when he did he stood stiff as a board beside the bed, staring until the image was imprinted on his retinas, showing up as fuzzy blobs of glowing negative colors every time he closed his eyes for longer than a blink.

Yukio had always been the calm one, the one in control of himself at all times. Yet for all that, he'd always slept...well, not as wildly as Rin, who could in the course of a night's sleep tie his sheets in veritable knots. Yukio never quite managed the mouth-agape-limbs-spread-eagle positions Rin usually found himself in, but he still showed some life in his dreaming. He twitched his arms and legs, rolled from side to back to side, wriggled into more comfortable positions, sometimes even murmured nonsense in his sleep, much to Rin's amusement when he managed to catch his little brother in a nap.

This Yukio obviously wasn't sleeping, flat out on his back with dull arms laid too perfectly at his sides. His eyelids weren't twitching, his lips weren't moving, his head wasn't turning to the side as he sought a more comfortable spot in his pillow. An IV dripped clear liquid into his arm from a nearby stand, and a breathing mask fed him a steady stream of oxygen. White bandages, stained pink in faint spots here and there, wound around his head and peeked out from underneath his pale blue hospital gown.

By the time Rin returned to the dorm it was noon. He listlessly fixed himself a tasteless and frankly overcooked lunch, more to appease the noisy rumbling of his stomach than out of an actual desire to eat.

Then he found himself back in his room – his _and Yukio's _room – and there he felt more truly lost than he had at Yukio's hospital bedside.

He purposely mussed up Yukio's covers, hoping it would make him feel better.

It didn't.

And then, very suddenly, a thought occurred to him. It was a thought born of loss (for while Yukio wasn't really dead a coma he might not ever wake from was practically the same thing) and thus perhaps not the most logical or well-structured thought one could have, but it was powerful and possible (far more possible than simply telling Yukio to wake up and seeing it immediately be so) and so he embraced it fully.

Rin rifled through Yukio's cupboards and desk and drawers until he found what he was looking for: a cardboard shoebox, heavy and clanking. This he set on Yukio's bed and opened up.

Ammunition greeted him first. Dozens of spare clips, lined up and stacked neatly in the box, always ready to restock the stash Yukio carried on his person whenever he wore the black coat of an Exorcist. These Rin shoveled almost carelessly out of the way, dumping metal cases across the rumpled blanket in search of what he knew was stored beneath it all, out of the way but still available –

There. One spare black Exorcist's pistol, less fancy than Yukio's current guns (the guns kept with Yukio's other things by the hospital) yet of the same general make. Yukio kept it for its sentimental value, for it had been his first true gun and a gift from Fujimoto.

Rin turned it over in clumsy fingers, exploring the lines and levers of safety and trigger and the empty slot where a clip would be inserted – things he had seen Yukio operate dozens of times before, but had never paid much attention to himself. Still, he thought he understood the basics: insert bullets, point gun, pull trigger. Bam. Easy as 1-2-3.

With a lot of fumbling and a few false starts, Rin had a clip loaded. He stood up, grim-faced, shoved a few more clips and the gun into his bag, and headed out the door.

* * *

><p>Shura wasn't slacking, exactly – she just figured that she wasn't really necessary in the afternoon Esquire super-training sessions. They may have been focusing on close-combat weapons – the domain of a Knight – but their more regular instructor had things well in hand. The only student there with any potential as a knight was the pink-haired kid, and she could always hammer him into the ground another day, <em>after<em> he got the bare-boned basics of block and counter-attack drilled into him this time.

Besides, her favorite student (not that it was much competition really) hadn't shown up in class that day. Shura was willing enough to give him a single freebie due to the circumstances, but tomorrow he'd join his classmates if she had to drag him in by the tail herself.

She was wandering the halls, just considering paying Yukio a visit (lackluster company though he may be at the moment) and seeing if she might run into Rin there, when an out-of-place noise drew her attention. It came from the indoor firing range, a loud bang even as it was muffled by padded walls and some distance. Her thoughts immediately flew to Yukio, but just as immediately she knew it wasn't him. That was definitely a pistol's shot, but even if Yukio had managed a miraculous recovery and hit up the firing range without bothering to tell her (she wouldn't put it past him some days) the silence afterwards stretched too long. Yukio always fired off bullets like they were going out of style – even when he practiced with a single gun rather than double the shots were nearly continuous, and the pauses to reload brief.

And so, curious as to who might be firing a pistol when the only people in the building should all have been in the gym getting their butts handed to them by sword and staff, Shura took a quick detour to the long room where she had so often competed with a certain young bespectacled Exorcist.

The image that greeted her eyes was so strange that she couldn't help but stare.

Rin. Rin in safety goggles and a headset. Rin standing in front of a simple stationary target lane, hissing curses as he struggled to reload a handgun, his fingers so clumsy and shaky that Shura knew they were going numb from the recoil. Spent clips were scattered in a little pile on a nearby bench, further proof of how long Rin must have been going at it, yet for all that, Shura saw only a scant handful of marks near and in the outer rings of the target.

Kid had sucky aim, she concluded, and then she saw why, for Rin had finally managed to load the gun properly and raised his arm to shoot again – his _left_ arm.

"_The hell ya doing_?" she demanded, very loudly, striking a pose in the doorway with her feet spread at a balanced shoulder-width and her fists planted firmly on her hips.

Clearly some of her voice had gotten through, for he glanced briefly over his shoulder before performing a classic hand-in-the-cookie-jar double take. His eyes widened behind the goggles and his jaw dropped, and all in all he looked rather like that photo Fujimoto once showed her, the one of him being caught on camera with a dirty magazine spread open in his hands.

Shura flicked a hand toward her ear. Rin got the hint, reaching up to remove the headset and knocking the side of the pistol against the hard ear covering while he was at it.

"At least ya used those things," Shura said, moving further into the room and allowing the door to swing shut behind her. "Wouldn'a thought you'd be smart enough to."

Rin scowled.

"There's signs and posters everywhere," he muttered mutinously. "I can read, you know."

"Oh, so we just need a few more signs. _Don't teach yerself to shoot unsupervised_, or how 'bout _Don't teach yerself to shoot with yer non-dominant hand first!"_

"Everybody's busy, and I can't use my right."

Shura eyed his hand, but saw no injury or indeed any reason why firing a gun with it would be impossible.

"Why not?"

"Cause that's where Kurikara goes."

"So what? Ya think yer gonna run around shootin off one hand and slicin with the other? What in hell're ya thinkin?"

Rin shrugged mulishly and eyed the target off to his side, most likely in a bid to avoid Shura's gaze. She let him, taking the opportunity to get a slightly better look at the gun he held.

"That Yukio's?"

"...yeah. An old one. Well, old-_er_, I guess."

"An' what, ya just decided today that ya'd take it on a test run?"

He shrugged again and mumbled, "something like that."

His attitude, Shura realized, was much like that of many teens: a front for emotions he didn't really want to acknowledge in front of another person. And knowing this while knowing him, she thought she'd gotten something of a sense for just what those emotions might entail.

"You wanna do this, yer gonna work yer butt off for it, got me? Now c'mere, yer not holding it right."

Rin's response was to gape gormlessly at her.

"You wanna feel like Yukio's still with ya, fighting, right? If that's so, I can't stop ya. I ain't gonna try, either. But I can at least get ya properly started. Now take your stance an' we'll start fixin' up the mess ya make of yerself."

Shura was a swordswoman and a knight herself, but Fujimoto had once taught her the basics of working and caring for a variety of guns, perhaps in the hopes she'd follow his lead into the field of a Dragoon. However, gunmanship, like medicine, had never truly gripped her interests, and so she knew little beyond those basics. Once she had corrected Rin's grip and given him a few generalized pointers on aiming, reloading, and dealing with the recoil, he would mostly be on his own. Nevertheless, she managed to keep up a more-or-less steady stream of advice and instruction, as well as warnings meant to keep his expectations from soaring too high.

"Chances are, you'll never be the sort of crack shot yer brother is, especially working with yer off-hand an' dividin' yer attention between this and a sword, an' that's not even mentioning the years training he's got on ya. So don't expect perfection. Just get good enough to give yerself an' yer teammates a chance, an' that's _good enough_."

"I know; I'm not a genius like him. He's got bullets...I don't even know what they do." Rin paused to steady his arm and fire; the bullet clipped the far left edge of the target. He huffed and adjusted his aim. The second attempt went into the top right corner instead.

"Keep it to the standard stuff, then. Lead, iron, holy water. Listen to that little guy, the one with the glasses and brains – he'll tell ya what and when to shoot or slice or stand back and let the Arias and Tamers deal with."

"I can summon stuff—"

"_Real _Tamers, who focus on it an' know what they're doin'. Ya wing summonin' like yer tryin' to wing shootin' and like ya've always winged everythin' else. Bad ideas all around, kid; it's a wonder yer not already dead."

"I know, I know, I already got this lecture from—"

Rin stops, grits his teeth, and fires very wide, ruining his streak of shots that actually hit the target somewhere. His next two attempts also go wide, and when the trigger releases nothing but an empty-sounding click, Shura stops him from reloading.

"How long ya been in here?"

"Dunno," Rin says, looking around for a clock. "What time is it?"

"When I got here? 'Bout four, little after. Can't be too much later'n that."

"A few hours, then."

"S'plenty for now. Pack it up, short stuff; ya got emergency field medicine tomorrow followed by mass memorization of some broad-purpose chants. Gotta get yer brain some beauty sleep; God knows it needs it."

Rin groaned deeply.

"I hate that stuff! Can't I just skip out to practice more in here?"

"No," Shura said firmly. "Ya skipped today, an' that's bad enough since it was close combat sessions, what with that bein' yer focus, scatter-brained as yer gettin' lately. 'Sides, field med's important stuff; gotta know what t'do when there's not a Doctor in sight an' yer buddy's bleedin' out or comin' up all poxy. Panic or do the wrong stuff, and he's dead. Do it all right and quick like they'll be teachin' ya, and he might live. So ya better pay attention!"

"Yeah, I get it."

"Then after lunch I'm yankin' ya from the chantin' class for some quality Knight an' Flame trainin' time. Seein' as it's a miracle you've memorized yer own name an' address as is, I see no point in tryin' to force psalm an' verse into yer concrete noggin. Sides, ya owe me remedial work an' lots of it."

Shura's grin actually made Rin momentarily question whether he was supposed to be happy about missing Aria class or not. Being forced to memorize and recite nonsense on demand might actually be the lesser of two evils.

The next evening, Rin truly believed this was so, though it was too late for anything but regrets then.

Within a couple of weeks, Rin and Shima, as Knights in training, were more often in the field with Shura and other fully-fledged Exorcists than in the classroom, and Rin found himself learning more about demons and what killed them than he'd ever managed to remember from reading assignments and tests. One day, a month into their accelerated apprenticeship, Rin purposefully set fire to the very tip of Shima's staff at will, and quenched it the same way once the massive Ghoul they were fighting was dead. It wasn't until the next morning that Rin remembered how he'd struggled to light and control a candlewick's flame, and for an instant he wondered if he recognized himself anymore.

He later wondered if Yukio would recognize him.

Probably not, he decided as he gripped the hilt of the sword sheathed over his shoulder, firing at an oncoming rush of hobgoblins and actually managing to hit about as many as he missed (their numbers and close proximity to one another helped, to be honest). They drew closer yet and for once Rin anticipated Shura's command, holstering the gun, drawing his blade, and igniting Shima's staff as the three of them stepped up in front of the two Arias and the Tamer/Dragoon of the group. Weeks and weeks of rushing here and there as a Demon Attack Response Team had ground a few basic tactics into Rin's brain, though he still wasn't really leader material. He didn't rush ahead on his own, didn't do anything _too_ stupid or cocky (often), and flailed about far less than he once did while wielding his sword.

No, Yukio probably wouldn't recognize him when he woke up (and he _would _wake up).

But maybe, hopefully, he'd be proud of how far his big brother had come.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: <strong>This started off as something very brief and fairly light. Then it just expanded on me, and I couldn't stop it. It was inspired by a thought that occurred to me recently: Rin's stated long-term goal is to become the Paladin. Now, assuming they don't just give him the position for raw heroism in whatever grand plot the manga is heading for (which just sort of seems like a bad idea overall) and assuming he's actually meant to have a chance at making it (somehow, after a lot of growing up most likely), there's one little requirement he's going to have to fill: the Paladin must have mastery in at least three of the five disciplines of Exorcism.

I cannot see Rin taking on Aria or Doctor, given how much book-learning goes into each, unless something changes drastically in canon.

As such, this is my wildly-off-the-wall interpretation of how he just might start learning two other disciplines in addition to the Knighthood bit.

Cheers, all!


	8. The Gravestone Visit

**The Gravestone Visit**

**A/N: **I should probably try for something more lighthearted at some point in the future…

* * *

><p>Pale clouds shrouded the sky in a uniform grey and soft breezes played between the gravestones when a dark-haired young man walked down those dusty paths on an August morning. He made his way by memory to one of the stone markers, a mounted cross like so many others, distinguished only by the name and dates carved into the base.<p>

For a moment, he simply stood and stared at the monument that now stood for a once-living man, peering at it as though willing himself to see the face he recalled – either in spirit or in flesh, it hardly mattered – instead of blank white stone. A breeze ruffled his messy black hair and the long, dark coat he wore, and he blinked bright blue eyes against the stirring of the air. Then, he thrust his right hand into a deep pocket, and withdrew a short aluminum can, sealed and sloshing.

"For you," he murmured, as though slightly afraid of being overheard. His fingers popped the tab on the alcoholic drink and he set it against the base of the gravestone. He attempted a teasing smile. "Don't tell on me, okay?"

The grave remained silent, but he could imagine a response well enough.

"Yes, I'm old enough to buy that now. More than old enough, actually. Doesn't matter anyway; I snitched it from Shura. Call it a joint gift, I guess."

He imagined another question, tilting his head as he considered the one-sided conversation he was conducting, the can of beer untouched when it should have been picked up by now. Should have been, like the old man should have been...

He shook his head and focused on answering the unasked.

"Shura? She's fine. Same as ever, I think; a crazy old bat that likes to pretend she's younger than anyone in the room, even if it would put her under drinking age and nobody believes it. Don't tell her I called her that, though – old bat, I mean. I like life. Anyway, I can't imagine what she was like when she really _was _younger. How'd you deal with it?"

This time, his mind couldn't supply a response. He'd made the mistake of finishing with a question, rhetorical as it was, which he couldn't quite guess an answer to.

The young man huffed, ran a hand through his hair – getting shaggy, he was due for a cut – and crouched down on the dusty path in front of the grave.

"Everyone else...everyone else is doing fine. The whole world's doing fine, actually, at least on the demon front of things. It's actually settled down a bit since...y'know, _your day_...at least, it has according to all the old geezers who've lived through it all. Old like you."

He flashed a cheeky smile and almost ducked reflexively to avoid a hand that would never cuff the back of his head again.

"Let's see...what else...oh! I'm testing for Tamer soon. I feel pretty good about it, actually; seems I'm not a bad summoner after all. I should be able to pass, and then I'll have two Meisters under my belt. I'll go for three if I can just figure out what else I can do. I'm gonna be Paladin one day, like you. The guy in charge right now is a complete jerk, you have _no idea_. Arrogant rat-bastard, every time I see him I want to punch him in his pointy face, throws around all these stupid remarks about you, and me and my brother, just cause of..."

The young man cut himself off suddenly, flexing his hands and glaring. Tiny flashes of blue light sparked about his knuckles, and he breathed deeply.

"Sorry," he said, still a touch upset. "Sorry. Nearly lost it there. Again. Stupid temper. I can just hear you telling me to control it, you know. It's just...you...you're awesome. I never told you that enough, except when I was really little, I guess. Seriously though, if half the things I've just _heard_ about you are true, you kicked serious butt. And this guy...how's he get off with that kind of disrespect? It doesn't even make sense."

For a long time he was quiet, stewing and reflecting on all he's said and all he'd like to say, and just what the imagined ghost on the gravestone might have to say about all of it himself. At long last the young man huffed a soft laugh.

"_My _disrespect? Come on, I was a teenager. I was _your_ kid. That means it doesn't count, none of it. Cause, y'know, I was stupid at that age. Don't laugh – I bet you were too! And at least I've figured that much out, right? There's hope for me yet."

He rocked back on his heels, then sat down properly at last, folding his legs underneath him and completely disregarding the dust already powdering the back of his trench coat.

"You know most of the things I said, I was also teasing about, right? Even...even your age, I guess. Don't get me all wrong here – there's a reason the phrase is "Old Man!" – but really, you weren't _that_ old. Definitely not old enough to...to...leave. Me. Us. I..."

He took a deep breath to drive back the thickening sensation caught in the middle of his throat.

"I still needed you. And I'm sorry for all the stuff I said before then. I know, I've apologized for it before, but I never...did you know, for a while after, I actually kinda felt like I was being punished? Like you were taken away because I did something wrong, cause I didn't appreciate you or something stupid like that. And it was stupid, and selfish, so don't freak out at me or anything. I already know."

He choked back tears, stubbornly refusing to cry, and in the midst of doing so he burst into a sudden fit of giggles.

"Look at me," he gasped, "talking to you like this! Good thing nobody else is here; they'd think I was crazy, huh?"

Discretely, he glanced around to actually make sure nobody else was there. The path he sat on was clear, at least, and he took the opportunity afforded by his quick check to scrub the watering itch from his eyes. Stupid breeze, kicking up dust. He needed a distraction, a happy thought...

"Oh!"

His face brightened immediately despite the thickness still present in his throat and the tingling behind his eyes, which he absently rubbed again. He laughed a little and rocked back and forth like a child.

"Oh, dammit, I nearly forgot – guess what? I've got a girlfriend!"

He basked for half a moment in imagined congratulations and what would probably have been the beginning of a whole new litany of teasing remarks.

"Yeah, she's great, I really, really like her. She's an Exorcist, too. She was actually a classmate of mine; we just never exactly got around to dating until recently. I'll bring her along and introduce her someday. Wish you could've met face-to-face; I think you'd like her. Then again, embarrassing baby stories...maybe it's actually a little bit better you can't talk back. I'd still rather have to yell to make you shut up than this, but at least this way the Chinese Noodle Incident stays just between us, right?"

Maybe next time, he'd admit out loud to the old man's grave that he honestly wouldn't mind all those mortifying baby stories (and photos) cropping up around company again, if only he could have his dad back. Maybe next time he would...but not this one. He'd lost enough face with his previous, unplanned confession of reliance, and his nose and eyes still felt stuffed up and slightly off. If he let loose any more verbal mush, he'd probably do something embarrassing like start to out and out bawl.

He may not be as emotionally constipated as some guys, but that didn't mean his waterworks faucet had to be _that_ well-used.

"You'd tease me, wouldn't you?" he said to the grave, realizing he'd fallen silent for too long and choosing to pick up around where his thoughts had left off rather than try to remember exactly what he'd last said. "Yeah, of course you would. About everything you could. It was annoying sometimes...but kinda fun, too, now that I think about it. We could really get going sometimes, you and me. I'd always get _so _mad when I was little; I think you just knew what to push and I didn't. But then, sometimes, you'd come by my room and grin, rattle a movie at me or dangle an ice pop like a carrot and we'd just hang out for a while, and everything was cool again.

"Oh, and remember when you blackmailed me into scrubbing out the fridge that one time when I was thirteen by promising to take all the blame for that stuff I accidentally busted? I shouldn't have let you – I'm pretty sure there was a bit of mold in the back corner that moved on its own when I went after it. Apologizing a lot and sweeping up some broken glass would've been loads easier, and you still would've been the one to pay for replacements either way. You knew it, too, didn't you?"

The young man leaned back and talked the block out of his throat, washing away any prickling tears with fond, bright memories. Time passed – one hour, and then another – and at long last he looked at a watch and jumped upright with a startled curse.

"I'm gonna be late! Sorry, old man, date night – it is how it is. 'Fraid that even like this, you've gotta deal with your dumb kid rushing out on you to spend time with a nice girl instead."

He shot the gravestone the kind of grin one gives to lighten harsh-sounding words and turn them into something not entirely meant, then reached forward and patted one side of the horizontal bar of the stone cross, as if it were a living shoulder.

"Take care; I'll be back…probably next week sometime. Don't hold me to that if work gets in the way, though. Later, old man!"

Then, dusting off the back of his coat, he began to walk back down the row of gravestones, pausing a brief moment before one not terribly far along and giving it a pat as well.

"Bye, gramps," he says, and then passes on, breaking into a swift run and causing his coat to snap about his legs in the wind.

The very same wind rushes over the carved name _Fujimoto Shiro_, dancing dust across white stone and graven kanji, and whirls on toward another, one with a single can of beer set before it like an offering. By morning, a night-time rain will have diluted the drink and sent some of it overflowing into the dusty earth below, splattering the base of the white stone etched with the name of a famed paladin who died too young by modern standards – a beloved husband, father, brother, and uncle, a son of another Paladin by adoption and a son of the King of Demons by birth – _Okumura Rin_.


	9. Triangles

**A/N**: (IMPORTANT) This one-shot is intended to accompany my sister's chaptered fic, Veranderung, and makes reference to events therein, up to and including chapter twenty (uploaded today). If you haven't read that fic, you may not understand what's going on in this one-shot. It is an AU. A few things are a little different from canon.

If you have read it and are up to speed, I hope you enjoy my attempt at a humor vignette. :)

* * *

><p>The romantic lives of his classmates (such as they were <em>not<em>, mostly) weren't technically Shima's concern. He had bigger things to worry about after all, between deceiving his childhood friends in this hush-hush double-timing operation and pursuing Izumo-chan with all the enthusiasm he could muster and wrestling with the doubts brought on by Konekomaru's Child-of-Hell theory...just to name a few.

But it's not like this was something you had to snoop around to notice. Hell, they practically shoved it in everybody's faces. Always showing up together, hanging around each other, constantly murmuring back and forth in quick snatches while nobody was really paying them any attention, delivering tardiness excuses on the other's behalf (_A wardrobe malfunction?_ Shima was tempted to drawl more than once. _I wonder what caused that...)_

Yamada and Angelina-chan were _definitely_ going out.

Pity, really. Izumo might have been a goddess walking the earth, but Angelina wasn't too shabby herself. If only she was unattached...

And then came the ghouls and the Exwire exam and it was a little odd at the time but he'd been a little spooked despite himself and so no wonder his observations weren't quite clicking in real time...

Angelina liked Rin?

And Yamada had called her out on it?

(_Oh-ho, trouble in paradise? Angelina-chan, I'd willingly be your rebound...)_

And things had then carried on more or less as normal except perhaps that Shima noticed, from time to time, not only the little glances and movements between Yamada and Angelina, but also from Angelina to Rin, the lucky devi—dog. Lucky dog.

But still Yamada and Angelina hung out and showed up together to class or used each other as a main point of contact and, in short, seemed completely unlike a couple going through a break-up.

Shima was a spy. He had to read people, to fit into situations. He had to gather information just by observing things. And dammit, he was _good_ at it...or at least, he thought he was. Now he wasn't so certain.

Couple, or not a couple? Breaking up over Rin, or...what?

It wasn't until the morning they left for their official Exorcist Camping Trip that Shima thought he'd found the answer. He may have been laying on the ground, rejected and broken and probably bleeding out the head somewhere, but he'd still seen (and heard, through the ringing in his right ear) what Yamada said.

They were a couple. There was a fight, but maybe not a really serious one. Rin was either the revenge ploy and/or rebound...on both sides...or there was some other motive to their game. It was all so obvious that it was the plotline of hundreds of girly manga everywhere, from what Shima understood.

And from that alone, he also understood the answer.

They clearly wanted to make it a threesome, whether they knew it yet or not.

Maybe, in the interests of being a good friend, he should bring this up to one of them.

Or maybe he'd just settle back and watch the general flailing for a while longer.

You couldn't get entertainment this good for free.


End file.
